professionaljaywlker | Entries tagged with slice of life

Trying to keep my dreamwidth posts a monthly thing, as part of my touch grass initiative (which... i probably should remove tumblr from my phone while i'm at it. i'm fine with scrolling on computer, but perhaps it would make me less likely to reach for my phone for those Dank Memes).

Honestly I don't have much to say since last post in term of therianthropy, so I will probably not tag this post as such. I've been in an internship (ant lab shenanigans), and by virtue of Doing Very Humancore Work on the computer, my bird instincts have not been particularly titillated. We've been having heatwaves however, so while everyone is kinda going through it, my xerocole (just discovered that word) ass is thriving. Even made a shirt about it. My one personality trait is loving high temperatures.

I've been having a bit of a rough time in term of queer identity. I've been identifying back and forth between bisexual and lesbian since forever, mostly due to being nonbinary.
It's a very odd place to be in. People who have never touched twitter discourse are somewhat taken aback by the "lesbian who is not a woman" thing. People who live on the internet have a thousand way of telling which part of my identity is wrong or right, and who's grandma i'm murdering by doing gender wrong. It isn't helped by living in a country without the butchfemme culture, so leslie feinberg will not save me this time.
So periodically, I give up and call myself bi. I find this partially incorrect. It kinda implies i'm being hetero about things sometimes, which in my experience isn't really accurate. It makes people think I like binary men, which, sorry to my ever expending list of depressed metalhead men who want me to fix them, isn't the case.

Technically, I'd be something like enbian and sapphic. i guess? or one of those trixic things. Even I lost track of those nb specific microlabels. I suppose nblnb + nblw is the better way of wording it.
Quite frankly I thought that slotted in dykeish just fine, after all everyone and their mother was saying that lesbians loved women and nonbinary folk who felt it applied to them. Turns out, however, that this is often code for "women and nonbinary people I can pretend are women". People don't really like when it includes multigender folk, amab nonbinary folk, or anyone who might get weird looks in a woman's bathroom. Even cisgender butches are on thin fucking ice if they're genderweird enough sometimes. This is unpractical to me, person who likes first and foremost other nonbinary folk, and sometimes genderqueer women (be it a butch or an hyperfemme person who's full circled back to doing femininity wrong).

Other than debating over which flag I should buy for my gay little stickers, there's been the problem of being aro. I'm still pretty good at being aro. However good lord. Queerplatonic relationship are hard to explain to allos, and the only aro ive ever met was the "i want to live alone forever #thriving" kind, which, slay, i adore you, but isn't helpful to my plans of one day having SOME kind of living-together partnership. Quite frankly, 80% of my motivation for it is that it is dreadful to cook for one person. Perhaps I should start hanging marriage proposal around town for the only purpose of splitting two-packs of chicken breasts.

However god has been merciful to my aro heart recently, and has made every friend I had who was in a mid-at-best relationship break up. So I suppose I've got that going on for me. Cheers for divorce.

I'm a bird of the internet. I was born during the 2000's, raised with progressively better computer technology, in an ever growing internet landscape, by a father who is a computer nerd. Then, when I grew, I got attached to the furry fandom, renowned for being 80% IT staff (only half joking), and discovered the therian community, that only existed from my french perspective as words on a screen until very recently.

I've experienced forums and their harsh grilling, although I have been able to sidestep a lot of that unpleasantness by virtue of being an animal that people know a bit less than the habitual canine. I've experienced 2016-2020 tumblr and its messy mix of fluffy roleplay, vitriolic hate from random trolls, and strangely creative satire. I even tried amino, when i was young enough to tolerate the repetitiveness of its content and its low age demographic. And yet I think it's now that I kinda give up on the wider community.

This sunday, I went to a convention in my city, centering anime. There, I met another french alterhuman for a quick hi. I learned that another person a friend knows appears to identify as a new age therian (i'll say a tiktok therian, for simplicity. I do not know what definition they use, just the codes they use to flag themselves, so we'll see). I saw kids with masks playing with each other on all four. Animality is becoming a strange little counter culture for teens in a mall goth way. Will therian be the new alternative fashion after egirls ? Somewhat of an amusing, yet perplexing thought. We've gone full circle on teen wolf packs.

Then, yesterday, I went on tumblr. The internet landscape has become somewhat complicated to navigate for me. I do not do well with algorithmic websites and short form content, which explains my white knuckling on the tumblr space in spite of every dubious conversations that happens there. But even for me it's becoming too hard, and I cannot block enough of physical nonhumanity, which appears to have taken over the space. Attempting to discuss the conflict in needs between folk who do not want to tag their content, due to this being taken as reality checking, and psychotic folk, who struggle to avoid content that can harm them, resulted in an overall very unpleasant response from folk I was probably more optimistic about than I should have.

The whole thing was quite a mess for me. I'm in a bit of a poor state currently, and probably should not have made that post. Honestly having made it probably was a sign I was not quite doing great, as it was somewhat out of desperation after encountering yet another psychosis trigger I didn't manage to avoid even with my miles long blocklist. I have not slept much. I am unmedicated due to issues with medication in my country. I have dropped below 45kg for no reason I can remember. And I'm wondering, is it worth it? Is my time online, in that sort of community, worth it. I have always enjoyed discussions, and one reason I have not left the wider community was because it was the only way accessible to me to chat with other nonhumans. But now, I am starting to be able to find some in real life. Yes, maybe not birds. Maybe not people who enjoy writing as much as me. Maybe people who do not care as much. But between getting my sense of reality fucked with, and a mildly shallow conversation over drinks, I think the choice is easy to make.

I'm not entirely sure I even want to call myself alterhuman anymore, simply to avoid the connection to the wider community, and have my own nook. I don't think I can let go of therianthrope just yet as a label, even though i'm unsure of its use for me sometimes when trying to express myself, when the word seems to take on a life of its own to mean a variety of things that I would need to explain anyways. These days i'm starting to find a fondness for the concept of furry lifestyler. My fursona might not be strictly my species on the serious level of therianthropy, but perhaps it is a good thing, perhaps it would be better for me to focus on something I find fun, more than on the hope of my writings being useful to a community that has becomes inhospitable for me.

Current Mood: pessimistic

A general life post once again.

I'm settling into my new apartment ; It's a pretty nifty roosting spot, honestly. One story up with a nice balcony, and i've been furnishing it with wood-and-iron type industrial lightweight furniture that give it a very pleasant "hidden through the branches" feel from the night side. The day/work side is quite near the window, and i'm not quite used to it, feels exposed, but i'm excited for summer and being able to open the balcony up to let air in.

Honestly, for my idea of a cozy bird's nest, i'm pretty close ! I've been looking at plants, possibly, but with my own botanical skill and the northeast window i've not seen a lot of "desert-ish" plants that'd thrive. But I've also not looked that long.

My bearded dragon also finally got out of her brumation : 12 years and counting ! I wish I could relocate her to my new apartment, it's a pain to have to delegate her care to my parents, and i'm not satisfied with it (it's not their job, and i'd rather be able to watch out for behaviors they may not catch). But ah, still nice to see her move around again. Plus she picked a great week, the sun's been a lot more present compared to the frigid temperatures a few week back, and my sun-bound soul is singing. Now if I could properly sunbathe with a spring temperature that'd be great, but i'll take what i can get.

I've also started my botany semester. Not much to say, it's very fun, but we're pretty much doing the basics. A lot harder to follow through than zoology : plants are quite annoying in their capacity to look nothing like each other even when related...

Bit of a general journal entry because i'm struggling to complete anything big. I'm so... bone deep tired these days, and it's making me tilt a bit into mental health stuff. I'm not looking forward to potentially having to up my med dosage and becoming even more tired.

So here's a bit of a lighthearted post, even though I think not many people will read this.
I'm really into the work of Jay Eaton, particularly Runway to the stars (jayeaton.site/RunawayToTheStars/home), so I've been doing a few drawings related to this world.
I like a lot that it lets me imagine a society with very different cultures from humans. I enjoy avians the most, aesthetically, obviously, but honestly in term of society all of the big three sophonts are interesting.

My ocs, missing the two centaurs.
The six ferrets are married roommates. The top three are engineers (more later), Flashbang is a dye-artist and hairdresser, patch is unemployed and does the upkeep of the house (they otherwise studied medecine, but chronic illness made them stop, for now), and ghost is a computer technician who either tags along with the engineer team or does remote work.
Witatiw (Skimmer bright), is a tailor, and tiktik (pygmy/arctic dun) is a materials engineer.

I've placed them on a space station, and they've met each other either through work, or through a shared passion for fashion (flashbang, ghost, witatiw and tiktik particularly).

The centaurs, awgle-te and noutentaw, are not on the station and communicate with the group via forums. they are a bit more removed from this group of ocs.

More about beetle, espresso and peachy. This drawing was mostly a way for me to kinda grasp bugferret features. The white band on each of their necks is a sign of their shared family.

Old art of the bugferrets and witatiw, who in this doodle was wearing carnalist clothes, which is basically a punk subculture of avians.