#meihin

Okay, first of all, I’m kinda big on “you do you, if it’s fun and something you love, then it’s okay”, but I need to explain this too much so here goes. GIJINKAS ARE OKAY. DRAGONS ARE OKAY. ANTHROES ARE OKAY. XENOMORPHS ARE OKAY. SENTIENT VACUUM CLEANERS ARE OKAY. ANY COMBINATION OF THOSE IS OKAY. YOU HAVING FUN IS OKAY.

And then to the meat of things. Gijinkas, or rather meihins in Pergamon lore. The short...er version (it’s not short, I’m a lying liar)

If we were more honest they would be called beastforms

Oh you think beast means something that is not human-like? Sucks to be you I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Anyways, there are plenty of beastclans with upper bodies and faces that look human so gtfo with that “but whyyyy” whining ^^

At this point, a quick recap of the past of dragon species à la Pergamon:

Deities = creators

Deities also = abandoners

Dragons = wild

Dragons also = free shapeshifters

Beastclans = open to civilizing these wild things

Dragons: accept invitation y/n? = y

Dragons = finally aware

Dragons = evolving

Dragons = molding their new culture and identity based on beastclans

Dragons = molding their shapeshifting based on beastclans

Dragons = getting more limited in their shifting with developing sense of SELF

Dragons also = kinda ashamed of their wild animal past

Dragons very much = LET’S ERASE THAT PAST

Dragons hinting = Aren’t beastclans actually... less civilized than us?

Beastclans = you are officially blocked from our lands and our libraries

So here we are, at a point where all that happened some thousand or so years ago. Dragon life spans are 150-200 years so quite a few generations. So what’s it like today?

Dragons only have 2 forms, birth form and meihin

(some individuals exist with less ties to their own damn ego who can shapeshift to more forms but they’re rare)

Meihin has turned from the beastclan interaction form to a cohabitation form and up to individuals on how they use it

Both forms exist very solidly on Pergamon lore, neither is right or wrong. It only depends on the dragon in question, what they need and prefer

Some spend most of their time as meihin, others use it very rarely or never

THEY BOTH EXIST EQUALLY AND THE FORM JUST DEPENDS ON THE SITUATION AND OC IN QUESTION SO DON’T LET ORI AND EUDY MAKE YOU THINK THIS PLACE IS GIJINKA 24/7

BUT ALSO I WON’T BE DRAGON AROUND THE CLOCK

ahem

So no one remembers that meihin is a form based on beastclans because that past has been successfully erased and beastclans made the primitive enemies

No one even knows what meihin means

(it means beastdragon, a literal translation of meiha=person and hinjoo=dragon, from Serthis language)

Meiha is meant to encompass all who are sentient, capable of abstract thinking, and forming a culture. It doesn’t mean beast as in monster or animal. That’s just dragon propaganda. Take that context away and beast is just as good a word as meiha, as long as dragons acknowledge they’re meiha or beast too

And now you know why Serthis are the angriest balls of hiss bc you would be too

ANYWAYS

As meihin are so strongly influenced by Serthis, and on some extent Centaurs and Maren (tho they’ve always been more elusive) the dragons adapted to those “human” aspects FULLY

Which means that when they switch to meihin their dragon-like features actually become unwanted

Wings? Snouts? Fur? Scales? NOPE

Dragons whose meihin keeps any of those features are called ferals

Being a feral is considered something that is caused by a weakness of character and dragons like that should be shunned

Even tho no one could tell why if you asked them, that’s just the way it’s “always” been, don’t ask stupid questions??

No one knows shit, okay?

Smooth meihin = good meihin

Which gets us to the hidden past portion of this PSA~

Beastclans still know what’s up but they won’t tell. Dragons are enemies and all that. They literally started a war to deny that past so no thanks

And whoa, did you think such a large scale erasure of past could be laser pointed to just this one thing?

Oh no, no no no... HUGE chunks of history are missing, anything that could hint in any way to the dragons being any less than ready-made creations of the ancient creatures that abandoned them

Shake ‘n Bake dragons~

Oh and no one knows they were abandoned btw

Because those opportunistic harpies deities decided that intelligent dragons might actually be useful to them

At least some of them did

There has been no record of anyone seeing Icewarden or Gladekeeper in a really long time

And no one likes history

I can also use beastform as it is a shapeshift form born out of beastclan interaction. The problem is the dragons themselves don’t know it. It’s part of history that has been erased and if some small backwater places still use beastform interchangeably with meihin then so what? It doesn’t mean a thing bc even they don’t know why, it’s just what has been said, always. I can use the word in lore posts but it’s not a term that comes up in my actual lore stories, not unless there is some heavy meaning to it.

And lastly there is ofc gijinka, and I do use that occasionally, especially when explaining my characters to new people. But for lore speak? No way. They don’t refer to themselves as gijinka so the only purpose for the word is clarity for new people.

I don’t use anthro for the meihin forms btw bc I draw line between gijinka and anthro to the head. For me gijies have human face and anthroes have animal face. So my beastforms are gijinka. Anthro type forms are actually a thing but outside some freak accident meihin transformations it is pretty ancient history, from the time when dragons were still more fluid with their shifting.

meihin and eihin are twin panda cubs at wakayama zoo.