#think of the species euphoria...

[possessed-pack]

I just had an amazing Halloween idea. We have a cane, and we could use that as an extra long limb, like an arm stilt, to be a real messed up half-quadruped creature. Like think one of those cryptids that walk on all fours but they look like their arms are too long and they'd be better off bipedal if their arms weren't so messed up.

We could either get two canes to make it work, *or* decorate the arm without the cane so it looks like that limb had been cut off.

The species euphoria I would get from this is insane.

[theverynothumankai]

some more things i find species affirming/euphoric:

washing my arms off with water from streams/rivers/etc.

running around and playing with animals

sleeping with my body pillow around me

drinking ice water in the middle of the night when i wake up randomly

staring at the moon and looking for constellations in the night sky

piling up sticks and twigs

being too close to fire pits so that the waves of heat make me feel like i’m scorching but it’s still safe for me

running up stairs on all fours

buying new plants

calling my boyfriend “my mate���

digging in the dirt for bugs

stomping on ant hills (i always feel guilty afterwards though 😔)

catching fireflies and keeping them in jars

taking care of injured insects and the like

late night walks

[euclydya]

<== guy who is not a person>>!!

[knismarijuana]

vampire looks ...happy hawween (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ)

[wachi-delectrico]

Thinking about anthropomorphic dragons. Basically all anthro wyverns would have ripped af pecs

[fagdykevash]

i'm the hottest deerboy on the block (<- coincidentally the onyl deerboy on the block)

[jackalopegirlantlers]

bunnygirl survives ten grueling hours in asbestos-ridden office

i had an autistic meltdown after bc the backrooms vibes got to me :(( but i looked sexy and happy in the moment and the sunset was pretty

[scpwiki-official]

hey chat does anyone have like an experience with eating liver

[foxsquawk]

I'm having a moment if you can't tell

[pingsthoughts]

i dont have visual snow or anything like that but the way i comprehend sight makes it seem like everything except the one specific thing im focusing on (and sometimes even that) is overlayed with static

so thats nice

hmm

[whumpandothercomfort]

There's a flavor of whump I'm always craving that I don't see very often, I think because the possibilities are so context-specific. You can do some things in some universes that you can't in others! You can do certain things with non-human characters that you can't with others!

But hear me out:

Whumper making physiological changes to Whumpee's body.

Could be through programming for robot characters, dedicated brainwashing for humans, magic for fantasy settings, weird biology for aliens...

A few examples off the top of my head:

Alien species that instinctively responds to neck squeezing by going limp like a scruffed kitten, because this helped them survive encounters with predators. Delicious all on its own -- now throw in a quick surgery to permanently clamp the nerve responsible. Whumpee wakes up in a permanent state of relaxed submission and can't even show how terrified they are.

Obedience programming/training that's wired directly into a character's brain. When the system detects unwanted thoughts, it applies pain. Even after rescue, Whumpee can't think of themselves as an autonomous being because their mind is desperately protecting itself.

Characters with magic having their magic corrupted or bound so it either hurts them to use, or it can only be used to serve Whumper's purposes. Bonus points if Whumper has full control over their magic AND the use of it hurts them.

Characters given a brain implant or parasite that stimulates the reward center of the brain, which would be great, except they can't turn it off. They're kept in a constant state of bleary euphoria... with just enough sense of self left to know they want it to stop.

Characters being spelled or programmed so they physically cannot function independently. Characters who very literally NEED to be given permission to do things like relax or take a walk or even use the bathroom. Not being given this permission leaves them in a state of locked stasis -- fully aware of the time passing. Bonus: Caretaker can't reverse it, so they just HAVE to navigate All Of This.

Alien species that will a develop chronic physical illness if deprived of touch for too long. Said illness can only be treated through regular physical touch. Defiant Whumpees will often be locked in solitary confinement and fed through a slot in the bars until symptoms start to manifest. Sometimes they'll be left even longer, to make sure they end up a severe case. And now, oopsie, the only way to ease this horrible pain is by letting your captors put their hands on you!

Just. Physiological whump. The horror of someone else controlling your body or your mind. Betrayal of body. Etc. Do you understand.

[canines-crown]

Tbh I believe that for most of us, being alterhuman isn't this crazy thing you think about daily... I'm sure that a good chunk of alterhumans don't notice/care about their identity, and don't even know that there's a word for it, because they simply associate themselves with a being and that's it?

I'm curious as to how many people just "see themselves as wolves" and never mention it to ANYONE

How many people grew up with cats and now feel as if they're part of the species themselves

How many people feel euphoria when horseback riding

Or when swimming

People that just say "yeah I really like dragons" and imagine themselves as one, feeling so beautifully connected to the idea

I believe there's a bunch of us out there who don't even know

[markscherz]

Can I ask how you feel about your Tumblr fame?

I get the impression you just made this account for normal casual funsies reasons, but it kinda blew up by happenstance. If that's right, I'm curious if now you feel like it's kind of a more serious thing, where you have an opportunity to sorta act as a science communicator with a reach you otherwise might not?

Or maybe something else? You gonna see if you can somehow leverage your Tumblr fame to get research funding? Deputize us to harass polluters and developers destroying habitats? Crowdsource name ideas for new species?

It's a bit bizarre, in that it has very little real-world-ness to it. I showed my mother the ongoing tumblr celebrity poll, and she was like 'how many people could possibly be interested in frogs?', to which I replied 'well as of today about 46,000 and counting'.

I have always had an unhealthy relationship with fame. I spent most of my teen and young adult life fawning after it, as is I suppose very often the case.

More after the cut…

I always really wanted to be famous, but I was never really interested in changing who I was or what I represented in that pursuit. That is to say, I wanted to be known for what I was already doing, or for things that were already interesting for me, rather than things that might have much higher chances of success but require more effort or be less in line with the things that I am interested in.

I had my first brush with virality in 2012, when a poem I wrote went a little viral (largely thanks to StumbleUpon). I remember the rush of seeing how much attention it was getting, and staying up late to keep refreshing the page as the visitor numbers went up and up and up.

But not long after that, I had some closer encounters with fame and people becoming famous. That was extremely eye-opening. I witnessed first hand how strongly that can affect someone's life, for good and for bad. That experience also made me realise, quite jarringly, that famous people are still just people; that celebrity is something extrinsic to them; that they also wipe their own butts (if they are able); and that in many cases, it is a substantial inconvenience if not downright pain in the ass for them. I think this is why we see so many of the big celebrities having mental health crises or trying to live as much of their lives out of the public eye as possible.

That experience pretty much stifled my desire to achieve fame, and really changed my relationship with it. I should add that I could say much more on this topic, but nothing so coherent or insightful as John and Hank Green, who have given me so much clarity on this topic over the years through their thoughtful commentary on youtube and their podcasts.

Anyway, in spite of the fact that fame itself doesn't really appeal to me anymore, I do still have a problem wherein I quickly became addicted to the microdosing of euphoria associated with every reblog and like and follow. So I put huge efforts into social media in order to try to gain traction in the space that I felt I could really compete in—Very Niche SciComm™—and build up a following.

Tumblr was the first platform where I felt that really succeed; I managed to fight my way to a few thousand followers with a thick queue of regular posts about herpetology and other science. At that time, there was a great community building up in the rudimentary private messaging system—I am still friends with several other tumblr bloggers from that era (none of whom I have ever met in person). From that early time (2013), I think my most successful post was probably this one about germination of 32,000 year old seeds—a post that, as of today, has 836 notes, but at the time felt huge and exhilarating.

As I went through gradschool, I got more and more active on twitter, and less and less active on tumblr (by the time I wound down, I had about 8,000 followers on tumblr). This was partly because of the pornbot takeover on tumblr, which meant I basically could not go on the platform in public or at work, but also because the audience and interactions are just fundamentally different. Twitter had a different kind of vibe and energy than tumblr, and there were real SciComm experts there, who were doing it just completely differently. More importantly, I became more focussed on doing outreach aimed at colleagues, rather than non-experts.

Then, in 2017, I hit headlines for the first time. The description of Geckolepis megalepis made it big on social and traditional media, and I had my first experience with real media attention. I had a flurry of late-night phone-calls with journalists in the US. This was a different animal altogether than the few viral posts I had had until that point. It was extremely stressful, but exhilarating. Then in 2018, our chameleon fluorescence story made similar headlines, and in 2019 the Mini frogs, and in 2021 with gecko fluorescence and the smallest chameleon.

Seeing my name on the BBC News website and in the New York Times and National Geographic—those things have been the most surreal moments of near-fame I have experienced so far. The number of followers on social media is quite difficult to conceptualise, but seeing your own name in a media outlet that you consume regularly, or have grown up with, is more palpable.

In any case, I continued to run with twitter as my main platform for years, because I found the interaction with colleagues and other academics highly stimulating. In 2021, I even posted a twitter thread about a different species of frog from Madagascar every day for the full year. All this work was ultimately greeted with mediocre success; I just crested over 10,000 followers a few months before the Musth takeover. But then the platform became basically unusable. And in the fallout, I came back to tumblr, where, just by chance, I happened to find a post about the Mini frogs and reply to it and it went properly viral and now here we are. In the space of a year, I went from having 8000 followers to having >46,000.

How do I feel about that? It's bonkers. I think it is great that so many people are interested in hearing the Good News about frogs and other creatures. But I also feel like I am not really on the same playing field as most of the others in that poll mentioned above, in that I do not have any of the celebrity that several others have. And I know for a fact that there are fanblogs with far, far larger followings than I have. But perhaps that is the great thing about tumblr; that the playing field is somehow levelled…

What's the point of this ramble? Well, first I guess it is to outline that I have given fame a lot of thought over the years, and I have a long-standing and complicated relationship with it, and take it quite seriously. Second, to illustrate that I have been working on as a science communicator or person in outreach for many years—it has kind of been my social media brand since I started gradschool in 2013. And third, to kind of outline how we got here, because I often feel like you have to know where an arrow has come from in order to figure out which direction it will continue to fly.

You asked if I would somehow try to leverage my tumblr fame to get research funding—I already do that. In fact, my social media activity had a signfiicant role in landing me my current job, and will continue to help me achieve tenure. Outreach is an important part of my job, and funders like it too.

I would love to have the community-building power and tenacity of the brothers Green; Nerdfighteria has achieved some incredible things over the years, and the power of that community is now being seen at an unprecedented scale in their battle for equitable access for tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment. But I do not have that in me; this platform is the wrong one for community activation, and my community is still too small for that. Moreover, it is not organised or structured, in the way that I think effective deputisation would require.

As for the crowdsourcing of name ideas, that is currently off the table. I like to try to name things on my own or with my colleauges; it is a very good part of the process. And I have yet to hear a suggestion for a Mini species epithet that I had not already come up with myself, so I am not convinced that this would really augment the experience.

So for now, I hope that the main way I use the platform, and the power that comes with a few thousand followers, will be to spread the Good News about frogs and other wonderful animals, and the other kinds of science happening around us (and occasional other off-topic content). I hope that you are encouraged to explore the world around you, and to do your own reading to find out more about the subjects that interest you. And also I will continue to try to make meme-worthy content, because it does nice, if addictive, things in my brain when I get the clicks.

Thanks for asking, anon, and sorry for the Wall of Text.

[misstycloud]

Just thinking about a darling who loves the idea of aliens and the thought of life somewhere else. But unfortunately their knowledge doesn’t extend beyond the classical little green creatures with big eyes and heads.

An alien of the species X is traveling through hundreds of galaxies and dimensions in search of a perfect mate. They suddenly get the urge to travel in a specific direction.

Eldritch alien: Earth? Is my mate really from such an unadvanced planet?

They decide to land anyway and is unimpressed with what they see. They decide to use their super technology to disguise themself to what is considered an anarage human. They walk around town and believes the trip was a waste of time, until they see darling for the first time.

Their mind is blown. Darling is the cutest thing they’ve ever laid their eyes on! Immediately they feel the pull and start stalking them. They learn everything they can about darling, food preferences, what they like to do for fun, and even what they like in partners.

Imagine the euphoria they feel when they find out darling is into the idea of aliens! Things might be rough in the beginning of taking darling, but things will surely clear up when they tell them they’re not from earth.

-

Darling, woken up by strange sounds outside their house and goes to check it out, even though it’s against every horror movie rule.

As soon as they walk into the kitchen they see a large shadow standing there. Before they manage to get a sound out, the creature pounds on them and keeps them from screaming.

Eldritch alien: shhhh, little mate. Don’t be scared, I’m not here to hurt you.

Darling sensing the large frame and tentacles definitely doesn’t belong to an earthly creature: what are you? What do you want from me?

Eldritch alien: I’m your mate and I’m going to take you away on my ship. As to what I am, I am part of species X, of course. I am what you would call an alien.

Darling: …….. No you’re not.

Eldritch alien: ……?

Darling managing to loosen the aliens grip on them: I’ve seen aliens before in comics, and you certainly doesn’t fit the picture.

Eldritch alien: ????

Darling: I mean, no offense, but look at you. You’re all tentacles and you’re head isn’t that big either too be honest.

Eldritch alien: ??!!

Darling: soooooo, you come from the forest or something?

Eldritch alien having no clue what’s happening: please, I promise I’m an alien *sob sob* I’ll even show you how to suck up cows with my ship.

[gtsdreamer2]

   You were deep in the Amazon rainforest. A recent graduate with your mycology doctorate, you were researching a special species of mushroom that only was said to grow deep in the jungle and only during the twenty four hours of the full moon during the autumn months. According to ancient texts found in the indigenous people's temples, the mushroom was used in fertility rituals and to signify a bountiful harvest during these months before the cold winter. You were curious about the cultural significance as well as the medicinal properties of this rare shroom. You didn't know what it looked like, only that it wasn't foraged for by the locals anymore and that it should look like a mushroom that you don't know.

   Hours of searching later, you begin to grow tired and wonder if you should give up and wait until the next full moon. The sun is starting to set when you finally spot something different. It's a mushroom you've never seen before, which is remarkable seeing as how you've seen them all. The cap is a pinky flesh color with an even pinker button on top. You giggle to yourself as you remark that it looks like a tit with a firm nipple poking out of it.

   Kneeling down, you take out your notebook and a pencil and begin to sketch it. 'I'm just drawing a boob.' You think to yourself. You stare in awe at this shroom as the sun continues to set. Taking your pencil, you poke the nipple-esque protrusion. Immediately this mushroom expells a giant cloud of spores right in your face. You gasp in surprise, sucking into your lungs an ample amount of the potent plume.

   You hack and cough, but its way too late for that, they're already lodged deep within you and entering your blood stream. Your eyes dialate and your body grows hot. You stand and lean against a tree, trying to catch your breath. You can feel your heatbeat in every nerve. Your cells are responding in a way they never have to the new foreign agent that has begun to take over you. Your heatbeat concentrates in your breasts as you feel your nipples grow almost painfully erect. Then you feel your breasts start to press against your soft white cotton top. You can feel the belts on your corset tighten to try and contain whatever is happening to you. Suddenly you shoot up four inches in height.

   Your sudden growth spurt elicits an a forced maon from your mouth. "Mmmph!" You cry out as a second wave hits you. The belts on your corset snap and suddenly you're six foot five with the seams of your jeans splitting. You feel your feet break free from your hiking boots as your toes sink into the damp rainforest earth.

   'This is starting to feel really good.' You think to yourself as you start to regain a semblance of your normal senses. Doing a body check, you can tell that you've grown. Your breasts have at least doubled in size and are now very hot and sensitive to the touch. You can feel a hunger deep in your womb as if ovulating on steroids.

   You attempt to sit down on the cool jungle floor, your now massive ass shredding the back of your jeans as you squat down. You pick up your pad and pen and continue to make notes about the shroom.

   'It is clear that this is how the Amazon women in the lore of this land gained their stature, and I can clearly feel why this particular fungus was revered for its fertility-inducing properties. I feel so full of life, yet I also feel the need to be bred full of babies.' Looking back at your notes, you are in shock that you actually wrote that down.

   You wonder to yourself how potent the flesh of the shroom might be, considering what just inhaling some of the spores had done to you. As the sun began to set, you walk back over to the shroom and delicately pluck it out of the ground before greedily shoving the whole thing into your mouth, quickly swallowing it without so much as trying to find out what it tastes like. Again the euphoria strikes your body. You feel its effects ten fold as you quickly gain four feet in height and explode out of your inadequate top. Sitting back down on the remainder of your ruined clothes, you bask in the feeling of your massive body and heightened strength and senses. You close your eyes and listen to the jungle around you, lamenting that you ate the only specimen that you had found on your journey, and now the only evidence was what it had done to you. When you open your eyes, the realize that the moon has peaked through the canopy. Your dialated eyes can see the jungle floor quite clearly now, and shimmering all across the damp dense expanse before you, you can see dozens more of the mushroom glowing against the moon, as if drinking in its power. 'It would have been so much easier to find at night.' You chastise yourself as you stand up again. You leave your ruined clothes behind as you pick up your foraging Satchel and start to delicately pick as many of the shrooms as you can carry, trying your best to put them in containers without them expelling more spores. 'This will be so great for my research.' You think to yourself. 'And it'll make a great snack for the walk back'. You giggle to yourself as you pop another three into your mouth.

[mons7errr]

list of canine packers

note: this post contains photos of silicone (aka FAKE) animal-like penises.

all prices are in USD.

weredog's canine sheath

starting off this list with the packer i own. i absolutely love this packer, it's durable (i sent it through the washer and dryer by accident and it came out fine) and gives me great species euphoria. the core is removable and repositionable (image two), which is the main reason i bought it.

its main downside is its size, especially if you're a small person like myself. i have a medium (the smallest size it comes in) and it still looks pretty large when it's in your pants, even with baggy jeans -- i do NOT recommend wearing it with tight pants.

it is not budget-friendly ($82+) but i do recommend it if you can afford it. it only comes in one firmness.

beau's sheath

this packer is by @batbitestoys and was my second choice when i was looking for a canine packer. i like that it comes in multiple size options, and i love the texture and appearance of the fur detailing. it's a good a bit smaller than weredog's canine packer so this might be one to look at if you're interested in a more lowkey appearance.

beau's sheath is a bit more budget-friendly and starts at $25.

vulpini design's sheath

this is the cheapest packer on this list, starting at just $15, so very good if you're looking for a starter sheath. it's got a very simple and lowkey design, so it's less likely to get stares if you plan to wear it in public. it can come in one solid color, or split colors for the sheath and tip.

it comes in three sizes and three firmness types.

gorgon transformer packer

this is a unique packer because of its swappable design. the shafts are swappable (image two) if you decide you're not feeling so doggish that day.

it sits at a solid $56 and comes in one size only. i think it only comes in one firmness.

fredrick's sheath

these packers are sold by @kuduvoodoo. i love the fur texturing on this one, and it always seems to come in fun colors.

it comes in two sizes (mini and small) making it another packer that would probably be good for everyday use. it's quite budget-friendly (currently available models are $25 to $35 USD).

darque path's skoll

i just learned about this packer today, but honestly i love it. i appreciate the care put into the size of the shaft and its knot. custom models can include up to three colors and can be made in a variety of patterns.

it only comes in one size, but has three different firmness types available. it is not super budget-friendly ($61+) but it's cute and i like it.