If you live in or around the wilderness, regardless of if you're a therian or not, it is your responsibility to take care of the wildlife by preventing unjust harm. This means picking up netting, old fishing line, anything an animal could get trapped and die in. It's good to pick up other trash as well, but if you're going to do anything at all, netting is your top priority.

I've had to untangle bullfrogs from plastic netting like what I picked up today. My family has had to unwrap groundhogs from cloth netting. I've seen water snakes wrapped up and choked to death by fishing line. Whatever is discarded or washed down in the wilderness will catch and harm animals existing in their natural environments.

Me when I'm a dragon.

Bonus sketches and such below the cut

The entire story of The Last Unicorn's unicorn being turned human by Schmendrick, and feeling so much grief for her true form, while also slowly losing who she was and becoming someone entirely different, is so profound to me, and I don't see people talk much about it. That to me is nonhuman media, straight up. It's become more profound as I've aged and picked up on the themes better, though it was still one of my favorite movies as a child. I relate now to the unicorn's sense of duty to her forest, as well as her sortof lesser divine nature. Not a god really. More a spirit; something powerful and special, borne from and tied to the Earth to watch over some of its other creations. Like her, I am something powerful, with an air of something just beyond full human understanding, but not unearthly.

Tales From Earthsea is very different from the books it's based on, which is why a lot of people disliked it, but I thought the detail of people whose spirits were truly free becoming dragons was a fantastic addition. It's my favorite part of the movie. It gave me hope as a child, and speaks to me deeply now. I felt when I was younger that if I wanted for it enough, and believed it to be possible, that I may one day wake up as a dragon, and fly off to find a place I could call my own.

I also really loved werewolf media. I read a lot, and many werewolf movies are horror (which meant I wasn't allowed to watch them until I was older), so most of the werewolf stuff I liked took that form. Wereworld, Wolven, a few Goosebumps books, plus some nonfictional books about the history of werewolves were all things I enjoyed. I wanted to be a werewolf for a while, so much so that I believed I could become one. Though I think a lot of that was the deep wishing that I could transform into something nonhuman. I don't connect well with canines nowadays.

I think I have transformed in a way. I've shifted from wanting to be a dragon, to internally being fully draconic. My soul itself, if such a thing exists, is fully a dragon. And yet it's crammed into this human body. I've transformed, my body just hasn't caught up.

It's also a way to sortof reclaim the emotional isolation I've faced my entire life. Part of my particular brand of neurodivergence is my inability to connect with anyone, and my very low empathy. I don't know if I was born like this, or if it was stripped from me after a childhood full of neglect and solitude. But it's something I've had to come to terms with and learn to live with. Dragons in my mind are very solitary. Of course there are dragons who are social and feel things very deeply and have close-knit families. But I am not one of them. I'm the type to hold my own territory and immerse myself in whatever matters concern myself and myself alone, without care for the world beyond.

Then the trauma I experienced later as a young teen served to dehumanize me completely, and further divided me from the very few people I would've considered myself 'close' to. All the shame from what I went through manifested in a sense of deep self-loathing, that has never really gone away, and has only made me acutely aware of how inhuman and monstrous I am. Being a dragon then was less about safety, and more about embracing the alien, predatory sense of self I had. That specifically, in conjunction with my inability to connect, has created the very reptilian form I take. Nothing about me is soft or mammalian, and it feels wrong to ascribe any traits of that to what I am.

Because of all of my 'issues', every interaction I have involves masking. I like to think I'm pretty good at it. I come off as charismatic to those around me. But it's draining, unnatural, and it makes me feel even more like an impostor; like a coiled, tense predator. A dragon has no expectations of the sort. It can be distant and isolated and callous, with no mincing of words or faux platitudes. It can be vicious even, with no 'violation' of how a dragon is meant to be. It may be resented for its nature, of course. But it is no less draconic for it.

_____.About me._____

> Scintillan

> he/it pronouns.

> 20yo.

> forest dragon. Technically otherkin, but prefer the term nonhuman.

> DID system (alter within the system).

> queer and neurodivergent.

> sideblog. I like and follow from my main, @dragonwysper

> asks and DMs always open.

See under cut for tag list and BYF/DNI.