silveradept | December Days 2020 #22: And Now, For Something Fluffier

[O hai. It's December Days time, and this year, I'm taking requests, since it's been a while and I have new people on the list and it's 2020, the year where everyone is both closer to and more distant from their friends and family. So if you have a thought you'd like me to talk about on one of these days, let me know and I'll work it into the schedule. That includes things like further asks about anything in a previous December Days tag, if you have any questions on that regard.]

Something less heavy than the previous pieces, at least, I hope it goes in that direction.

If you had to be an animal, what would you be?

I suppose this is a question that could be about whether we think of ourselves as fierce and wild creatures, who would want to be places where we could predate on others and live free from the cares of having to do much more than that. Or to feel actual power for once in our lives near the top of a food chain, as if humans aren't remarkably effective predators in our own right, so long as we take advantage of our own strengths and abilities and stop trying to be something else. It just happens to be that humans are equally good at predating on each other as they are on other creatures of the world, and so we created our own order on top of the other one. The appeal of power is a great one, though, and I feel like there are more than a few people who would like to be able to achieve it, having been denied. And that there are plenty of people who have already proven themselves untrustworthy with the power they have, and should have it taken away from them and given to someone who will use it properly. I am both someone who wants to have enough power over my life to be able to make my own decisions, but worries that I would not responsibly use power that I might have over someone else's. Which, according to television and literature and other such stories, might make me a person who is qualified to exercise that kind of power. Unless I'm supposed to be the person that goes tragically wrong and becomes a corrupted evil person because I decided to use my powers too much. This is the part where it would be nice to be able to peek at my life from an outside perspective and see which tropes are the ones that have been appointed to my life, so that I know whether or not I will have and exercise the great responsibility part of the equation or whether I would just use the great power and forego the responsibility. Because there are some people that I would be a lot less responsible about use of power around, if I thought that my power affecting them would create a better situation for everyone.

There is an appeal to being a domesticated animal. A pet cat, perhaps, one that is fed and taken care of well, who gets to nap and eat and knead and occasionally get into mischief, without the concerns, necessarily, of being a human with responsibilities, and being able to curl up and be a comforting companion to the human (or humans) that I chose. I'm not entirely sure the shorter lifespan would make up for it, since most cats don't make it to as many years as humans do, but in a good househole with lots of love and affection (and proper food at veterinary care), being the house cat wouldn't be too terrible of a gig. It would probably be a lot more restful, especially with as many interesting things as there are in the world to explore, even when the world, in this case, mostly consists of the house that you live in.

I feel like this question is a lot easier to answer if you're in the furry / anthro community or are somewhat adjacent to them, because participating in the shared universe where people have their fursonas (whether furry, feathery, scaly, or otherwise) seems like a pretty neat place to be when there are cool people involved, and the cost of entry, at minimum, is having some idea of what kind of anthro you would want to be. I've seen some boss fursuit work to help bring the characters into a space where the mundanes can see and interact with them without the intermediation of the Internet. And it's nice to pretend that in a world where being an anthro is super-common, there would have already been enough of the accessibility things worked out to accommodate horns, wings, scales, tails, claws, digitgrade walking, and differing senses and sensitivities to various stimuli that come along with changing oneself, to name a few things. Regrettably, I have a feeling that the world would try to stay stubbornly human in such a way that getting any of those kinds of accommodations would be just as much of a pain in the ass as it is now for humans who need accommodations to get them (or at least, when there's not a global pandemic on that's requiring everyone to stay safe and distanced from each other.)

I've been furry-adjacent for at least some part of my life, possibly longer than I think, depending, but I tend to be the kind of person who goes for the slightly more mythic anthro decisions. Which is always something I couldn't quite suss out whether that would be the sort of thing where everyone goes, "Oh, yeah, you're a scaly, good ot meet you, let me introduce you to my friends," or whether there's some judgment going on about "ugh, yet another dragon. Yeah, go over there with them, have fun in your fantasy world." I mean, it seems like the sort of thing where if you're already in the space of anthros, then it's not that far of a leap to include mythic anthros, but, for reasons that are probably related to neuroatypicality and the childhood that resulted from that, I'm always a bit shy and sensistive about revealing things that I like or am interested in to a crowd of people who haven't already demonstrated theselves to be safe about those things. (Says the person typing on he Internet where anyone could wander by, look, and comment on the matter. I have the same illusions about the relative privacy and monkeysphrere-ness of the Web as anyone else who's never been the target of a coordinated harrassment campaign is, I know.) If I had to live in an anthro-style world, though, I would much prefer to live in one crafted by Dana Simpson. Even if it's an early and rough work, by her own admission, the world of Ozy and Millie has the right feel to it. It's also good at acknowledging that some creatures are just jerks to each other for many of the same petty reasons that people are, and so it doesn't feel like it's pretending that the problems go away. It just happens to be that there are different ways of dealing with the problems when you have Conspiracies and inter-species support groups and all of those things to go along with it. And, perhaps, occasionally, making friends with humans, once you've mastered the Shield of Boringness enough for the interactions to work like they're supposed to. Maybe also having learned how to speak Goblin enough to know the difference between "BLART." and "BLAART."

As with many things, the answer to this question is a bit of an "it depends," depending on how much latitude a person has when talking about "animal" and what's included. At least for now, though, with the current technology we have, I'm pretty okay with being a human, but I also know what my preferred options would be if I had to have my form changed, or if the ability to form change became easy and full of limitless possibility.