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My experience with therianthropy starts maybe 6 years ago, I think. In any case I began my research before the community got a foothold on tiktok and became known for masks and quads, and before any of that tiktok community made a migration over to tumblr. Using tumblr was maybe an effort to do better, so I don't wrong anyone for it, I just use it to say that quads were totally unimportant and masks were rare outside of fursuit equivalents.

At first I identified as a demon because of phantom stuff I'd identified in hindsight and in my day-to-day. This seemed like a phase that left after I started and later dropped a podcast as well as a few friends that I spoke to frequently about the alterhumanity thing. In either case, many of the older, still-running otherkin and therian blogs on tumblr I still recognize. Most of the outspoken dragons that live on tumblr are not new to me. I learned the terminology at this point and I still ride off of definitions from this time.

Fast forward to when I had left my parents' house for university and got this feeling again. It was accompanied by enough layers of ocd and repressed trauma, though, that it took a backseat to my more important problems. I identified "dragon" at this point with the same phantom shifts from when I was a teenager combined with dissatisfaction over a bipedal body.

And now it is today: I have my degree, I am back on Tumblr, and I am asking the same questions I asked years ago because labeling myself as a dragon and trying quads and wearing a fursuit tail haven't done anything and the dysphoria is bad. Really, really bad. I need to use marijuana to not feel like I need to crawl out of my own skin (and I wouldn't advise doing this for everyone, as I can safely acquire safe weed and know my limits and may also have a weed problem).