okay so barring being able to get back into mastodon.social (is it really dead, or did I do something wrong?), I might as well do some writing up of--how/why I'm furry-adjacent, or as I think of myself, Otherkin.

when I was in--maybe third grade, I wrote a story about a little girl (me) who finds a little dragon (also me) leashed to a post at school. the girl sets the dragon free and it flies away, with the implication that maybe it comes back and is friendly later. at the time, in the 70s, there wasn't much about dragons widely available--for young human females, the default was unicorns, and maybe pegasus(es).

I had to search a lot to find dragon stuff that wasn't stupid-looking, or that wasn't "wizard controlling a dragon" which was a standard icon at the time, or "knight/warrior killing a dragon" which didn't appeal for obvious reasons. I remember how excited I was when the Dancing Dragon catalog came out. SO MUCH DRAGON STUFF! for the first time in my life I had *choices* of dragon stuff!

when I was 17, I got inducted into my first AD&D game, with a GM who would let players make up anything they wanted. I said "can I make a dragon?" and he said "yeah." after that the only question was green, or red? I went with red. and Rasha had her first... hmm, quantifiable incarnation, something like that.

from the beginning it was obvious that Rasha wasn't "just a character," although I was careful to play her as one in the context of the game. (BLACKLEAF NOOOOOO)

for most of the next decade, Rasha went through a variety of settings--tabletop games, BBSes, fiction stories--all the time, becoming gradually more... solid. at one point, I was out walking, talking to Rasha as I was accustomed to doing, and I said emphatically "but you *aren't real*." and Rasha replied "then why are you still talking to me?" I didn't have an answer for that, and after that I didn't question her presence.

then I moved to Seattle, and a housemate got me onto the internet, where I did my very first web search (WEB CRAWLER LOLOL) for "dragon." no shit, the *very first search term I ever used on the internet* was "dragon." I remember that day, that computer, that feeling, when I discovered newsgroups were a thing and alt.fan.dragons was a thing and I NEEDED TO BE THERE. RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.

(content warning: I swear pretty frequently)

I forced my tech-enabled housemate to get me set up with usenet the next day, and joined alt.fan.dragons. HI EVERYBODY I KNEW FROM BACK THEN. afd was peripherally associated with alt.fan.furry, so there's the link. HI AFF VETERANS, HIIII

for many years, I stabilized as Rasha (the Really Real Red Dragon) and her human typist, E. we weren't... plural, exactly; there was me-as-human, and me-as-dragon. we were shadows of each other. we didn't swap--Rasha specifically disliked being present in a human body, and E wasn't able to maintain a presence in Rasha's body for long. but we continued to grow and evolve together.

we were always aware on some level that sooner or later, we would probably integrate into one being, or separate into two completely different beings. neither of us wanted to separate, but we had no idea how to integrate, and weren't sure we wanted to do that either. well... time passed, things happened, and our hands/claws were forced.

while on afd, we'd encountered Kaijima and his alternate-world Terra. there's... some complicated history there, and some woo-woo. Terra (aka Johmarr) is an alternate Earth where the K-T extinction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_extinction_event) never happened, and the dominant species are dragons and draconids, two variants of the same species.

Terran civilization is *staggeringly* old. an individual Terran can live for several *thousand* years. I have no idea how old their civilization is, but I would not be surprised if their prehistory doesn't stretch back into the millions. hundreds of thousands of years at the very least. they are equally capable at tech and magic (and don't see much difference between the two), have space travel (though prefer to stay on Terra for spiritual reasons), and look kinda like my userpic. (yes, ears.)

eventually, I recovered/created (psychology or magic: dealer's choice) a history of myself from Terra, which I will skip for now, other than to mention my ongoing fascination for xenopaleobiology (Martian fossils!) and difficulty dealing with information loss (I've desensitized myself to it a lot over my life, from necessity).

anyway, according to that history, my Terran self was killed right around the time that Terra itself was bounced sideways into an alternate dimension. I wasn't on Terra itself at the time, I was on Mars; I died violently; and I wasn't able to reincarnate on Terra because SUDDENLY IT WASN'T THERE. (it's come back since then; long-ass story, ask Baxil.) the trauma split me into two parts, which went to different places, and became a human and a dragon.

who eventually became aware of each other and thus, Rasha and E. tadaaa!

most recently... it's a bit embarrassing, honestly, but Rasha, after decades of staying aloof from E's emotional affairs, got involved with a human who E thought was--safe. that human was not in fact safe, and was in fact an emotionally abusive asshole. E had experience dealing with trauma; Rasha didn't, and the fallout... killed her. and then, we integrated, I guess as a survival mechanism.

that was several years back. (I have difficulties with time-memory; "several years" is I think four or five? but might be a decade? or two or three? I honestly don't know and won't unless I look it up.)

and now there's just me, green. tadaaa again!