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A Wolf Therian Can Have Blue Eyes
Word count: ~400
Reading time: ~3 minutes


A wolf is not just a wolf. A wolf therian doesn't have to be any specific type of wolf to be valid.

Not just in the "you don't need to know your subspecies/eye color/life history to be valid" way, but also in the "if you know all these minute details about yourself and they don't match any real wolves, that doesn't mean you're not a wolf" way.

When I first learned about therianthropy, back in '13, I ended up in a group where this was unacceptable. Wolves can't have blue eyes, alpha theory is made up, winged wolves don't exist, wolf packs don't wage war, etc., etc. And it's true, "real wolves" aren't like that. But... who's to say every wolf therian is a "real wolf"?

Set aside all thoughts of reincarnation, psychology, archetypes, etc. Why are you a wolf? What makes you a wolf? Anyone can have a past life or weird psychology or an archetypal connection to wolves, but not everyone who does so is a wolf.

A wolf therian is someone who has dreams of being a wolf, the instincts of a wolf, who pictures a wolf when they try to picture themself. Regardless of their origins, they're a wolf because "being wolf" is what comes naturally to them.

And if 'unreal' wolf traits, like blue eyes, A/B/O, or wings, is part of what comes naturally to them, alongside "wolf," then that doesn't negate their wolfishness. They may not be the same kind of wolf as you, but their core is still "wolf."

You can explain it away with "maybe they're a fictional species of wolf, so really they're fictionkind" or "maybe they're from an alternate universe where wolves have wings" or "it's just psychology, anything is possible," but all those musings are still origin-focused, instead of experience-focused, and they're a distraction from what makes a wolf a wolf.

Therianthropy is messy. It doesn't have to be bound by animal physiology. Whether your theriotype can be described as a timber wolf, an ethnozoological archetypal wolf, a fairytale wolf, a fantasy wolf, a scifi wolf, or something else entirely shouldn't matter.

If you're a wolf, you're a wolf. Even if your eyes are blue and you howl at the moon.