not flawed, just under-rehearsed

SIKE

THEY'RE GAY

And they're not some rare exception to the rule, either!!!

About 25% of black swan couples consist of two swans of the same sex (typically, two males).

These couples will court each other, build a nest, and raise their young together in a more-or-less committed monogamous relationship.

In fact, these same-sex couples have a high success rate of 80% when raising their young to adulthood, as opposed to the 30% of their heterosexual counterparts! Two big buff papa swans are better than one when it comes to stomping on invaders of nesting territory.

"But," I hear you say, "where do their baby floofballs come from? Does mpreg exist among black swans?"

Alas, no, but there is a very elegant solution to this. The swan couple may simply temporarily associate themselves with a female swan.

Afterwards, the female swan deposits their eggs and swims off free to live her single girlie life if she wishes (or, find a boyfriend. Preferably one who isn't already committed to another boyfriend.)

So whenever someone commits the naturalistic fallacy "homosexuality bad because unnatural >:(" I like to point out not only their glaring illogicality, but also, respectfully, there is homosexuality happening in the local lake right now.

canon is what happens in the text. e.g. merlin tries to poison morgana

a headcanon is a fact that you have personally made up as an elaboration of canon. it is your invention. e.g. i think morgana and gwen had a teenage lesbian situationship before the events of canon. or, i think modern morgana would love evanesence.

an interpretation is how one reads the existing text. it is not an invented fact nor is it a headcanon, it is a reading. e.g. i think merlin tries to poison morgana out of misplaced self-hatred. or, i think that one line was delivered with suppressed malice and shows a nuanced relationship.

fanon is the general fandom’s accepted headcanons and interpretations that elaborate or recontextualize canon. e.g. merlin is a badass waif and morgana is a bitch.

here's the first piece, inspired by that cathartic scene in I Saw the TV Glow (if you're trans or a furry, or unsure about either of those, you must watch it).

if you saw what was inside of you, in your perception a ridiculous and unexplainable and forbidden version of yourself--would you allow it to breathe? would you take it seriously?

lobsters live for a ridiculously long time in the wild (average 45-50 years). they molt their exoskeletons several times throughout their lives and the process is extremely physically demanding, in fact, it is the most common way for a lobster to die. imagine physically trying to turn yourself inside out and exposing your fleshy, soft and vulnerable insides at the bottom of the ocean. a lot of times they lose their claws during this process, abandoning the part of their body meant to protect them, obeying the natural mechanisms to allow a rebirth and transformation.

people don't take furry art seriously. it's cringe, it's bad, it's unserious. it exists to be mocked & laughed at. with my pieces i am forcing them to take it seriously. i don't leave room for these lobsters to be perceived as a joke. lobsters are a fundamentally un-furry animal, they are insect-like and aren't cute or cool, and that is precisely why i chose them--i wanted to approach them as an outsider, and understand how it is that i've come to grow so attached to an animal that, before this project, i at best thought of as, well, a joke.