ranthimi:

Hey, just a quick thing, we really need to stop assuming that a “fictional” origin 1. equals a human/human-adjacent experience 2. is less in-depth or legitimate than one who feels their origin is another Earthly species or a creature of myth and legend (which are also, incidentally, stories).

Being a Hollow is no less beastly than my experience of draconity. Both are intelligent in a way humans can comprehend while still being very obviously animalistic and feral in several ways, but one’s taken less seriously than the other simply because of the age of their origin stories. And that’s ridiculous.

Looking at my draconity, and the experiences and details of other people, they all seem to differ from “traditional” dragon lore and yet the consensus there is “human bias” when it comes to the nature of the stories dragons are depicted in and the reason for the inaccuracies. I hate to break it to you but having a “fictional” source doesn’t remove any artistic license, either. Modern copyright laws aren’t going to suddenly change the nature of things.

These things don’t register to me as one being “less real” than the other due to origin, but knowing that I’d be turned down in many circles where I’d otherwise likely fit in just fine due to that irritates me more than a little bit. Having a somewhat-identifiable counterpart that happens to be a character or species in fiction doesn’t take away from my experience or my legitimacy, and it especially doesn’t take away from being very nonhuman.