#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

[knismarijuana]

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

[euclydya]

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

[ashersbraincell]

Voidkin culture is being unsure of how you would feel to touch, if at all. Often I crave to be covered in soft fluffy fur, other times I feel like my surface ought to feel like gliding your fingers across a cool electronics’ screen.

[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.

[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.

[dateamonster]

described this to my friend as moreau experiences gender euphoria

moreau counts!!!!!!!!

[rareblackcat]

Things you can journal about

Please remember that these answers are open ended and there is no right or wrong answer.

1. How does your Therianthropy effect the way you see other non-human animals

2. How does your Therianthropy effect the way you see humans

3. How does Therianthropy effect the way you act in your day to day life

4. What about yourself do you consider not human like (personality, interests ect.)

5. Does Therianthropy effect your diet?

6. Do you have any spiritual or religious beliefs that effect your Therianthropy

7. Where do you think your Therianthropy come from? (Spirituality, psychological, metaphorical ect.)

8. Reflect on traits or feelings that made you consider that you might be a Therian.

9. Write down things you can do to feel more like an animal

10. What are some things that give you species euphoria and why do you think it does

11. Try writing a poem about your identity

12. Make a short story about being your theriotype

13. Draw yourself as your theriotype

[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.