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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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This sorta concept floats around in furry, therian, and (to a lesser extent) otherkin spaces pretty often, so it's not too odd to see if pop up in Zizian thought since they seemed to pull in whatever slipped through tumblr at a given time. There's been some attempts at extrapolating how much humans map around the concept of having a tail, and it is pretty fun for furries and therians when they can add prosthetic ones (and/or more expressive ears, hackles, so on). There are other behaviors like quadrobics that seem to spontaneously develop without significant public discussion or formal artwork, for better or worse.

But a lot of it's probably just trained or learned: too much falls outside of the space of things that non-furs do.

And, more critically, too much of it's non-falsifiable. A big criticism of 90s-style spiritual therianthropy was how much even the Weird Species therians only wanted to pick up the interesting and fun habits from their totem animal/fursona/whatever, over gross or lesser-known ones. And while that was somewhat overblown (insert a dogs sniffing butts, which was a common highlight, and rimming joke here), it applies as broadly or more broadly here. There's no shortage of Weird Behaviors specific to various lemur species or to most proposed common ancestors; there's not even a shortage of weird anatomy things. ((eg, is that weird 'jump wrong and fly' dream normal people get something something leaping lemurs ancestral memory)). You can pick and choose what you think might show up in a big enough populace, but even if you had a magic wand that distinguished 'this drive is shared and has a historical grounding' from 'this is just something you picked up from watching Zootopia', you could easily pick and choose until you had some summary that matched the real world but had absolutely no predictive power.

The moral argument is... less clear; Zizians aren't (weren't?) as attached to what they perceived as True as you'd expect from the capitalization, even beyond what you'd expect from a group like this. See the mess around dual souls (or Undertale), or even the bit at the end of that piece about a dragonkin. These people aren't making a REVURN argument, and the sheer variety in beliefs or expressions of this take makes it incoherent to attempt it. There just aren't that many lemur therians, and they don't want to start online drama with the LotR elf otherkin.

There's people who do or did, back in the height of online therianthropy, though they didn't often find much commonality with out trans folk of the era, or even into the late '00s. It might return, despite its incoherence, as the least-bad-agreement point for an often wildly-incoherent alliance of varied positions, only because the alternative explanations feel worse. TW's freedom of form as the logical endpoint of freedom of expression, but it's pretty unpalatable for a political sphere that's happy to draw territorial exceptions to those principles, nevermind its contradiction to the likely usable points.

The extent any specific position can switch be switched out for today's goals is... not encouraging, and the Zizians show exactly why, but it's also not a failure mode specific to them, or their political allegiance, or to their specific political fight.

Well that was a lot to read.

since they seemed to pull in whatever slipped through tumblr at a given time

What else do you have in mind? I dont remember anything about the hemisphere thing being tumblr.

quadrobics

I used to do this as a kid. Not sure why I stopped, but I just tried it again after reading this and didnt like it.

But a lot of it's probably just trained or learned: too much falls outside of the space of things that non-furs do.

This guy does not understand how visual similarity works in his interpretation, and even in the extended version linked there does not tell us the ratio between the three face types presented. I dont know how you evaluate him, but consider this a Gellman warning.

(or Undertale)

Dont remember that.

These people aren't making a REVURN argument

Well no; as per the author animal remnants are partial, and more importantly there isnt one coherent shape but lots of over- and underdetermining ideas (understanding this even though he? propably doesnt listen to criticism in any way was a positive sign for me), so thats not really something you can RETVRN to, but he does seem to think its something worth fitting yourself into better (into the version applying best to you personally, which as per above may vary significantly).

a political sphere that's happy to draw territorial exceptions

Not sure if this makes sense outside my head, but I think one reason body modification may be more accepted than the Gadsden flag is because the former is arational. Pure preferences are beyond justification or the need for it, but the flag has real content that may be "wrong"/subject to criticism. Theres an analogous thing where True Liberals have an easier time justifying medical transition than pronouns, reversed from what normies or the trans people themselves would consider extreme.

nevermind its contradiction to the likely usable points.

I dont know which contradiction.

The extent any specific position can switch be switched out for today's goals is... not encouraging, and the Zizians show exactly why, but it's also not a failure mode specific to them, or their political allegiance, or to their specific political fight.

Dont understand this either, not sure how much the typo is to blame.