“Holothere flag

So, we decided to make a holothere flag that would be aesthetically pleasing for us. Color meaning:

Sea green (background): all-encompasing nature of the holothere identity

Grayish green: those who “just are” holothere

Grayish blue: those who are physically nonhuman due to disorders

Dark purple: those whose holothere identity is somewhat spiritual

Licorice/off-black: the unknown vastness of possible holothere experiences

Dark red: those who struggle with their physical nonhumanity

Blood red: putting an emphasis on experience of nonhumanity as something also physical

Orange: those who find joy in their physical nonhumanity

Gold: pride”

Coined by starfallensyndicate on April 26, 2024.

“Holotherian Flag

a proposal for symbology, and a flag, for the holothere/holotherian label.

“Holothere” is a term for physical nonhumanity, coined by @defrostedvertebrae. A holothere considers themselves entirely nonhuman, including physically.

Here are my ideas, and their justification.

Symbol design:

• Invoking the sun: Altering the theta, turning it into the astrological symbol for the sun, to invoke clarity and confidence.
• Letting the sun shine through the vessel: Breaking the delta/del open, the light of self overpowering it.
• Inverting the delta: Inverting the delta (and turning it into a del, or nabla), to symbolize the shedding of the need for changing/transforming. This can also represent a shift in energy from fire to water, or from intensity to stability.

Flag design:

• Nonhuman Unity: The colors are inspired by the Nonhuman Unity flag designed by foxsee, with the addition of the lighter colors intended to invoke a deeper sense of inclusion among creatures using different nonhuman labels across the alterhuman spectrum.
• The power of light: The sun is shining through, its light is breaking through barriers, coloring everything around it. This is meant to communicate the intention to be Real, the intention to be Seen, the intention to be Bright.

Notes:

The sun and the del/nabla have unicode characters, so there is potential for the unicode representation “☉∇” for the sun-del.

If you are interested in learning more about physical nonhumanity in general, please feel free to check out the official resource from the system that coined the term holothere: holothere.carrd.co

High quality files of the designs are available here.

Lastly, I want to thank Rain (@vanillayoteart), Foxsee (@synanthropic), Coyote (@farayote), and Liquid Foxes for all of their help in the design iteration process of this symbol, flag, and its proposal!

this body belongs to a fox. this mind belongs to a fox. other nonhumans can tell, they can see it. it’s in my eyes. my eyes belong to a fox. I am a fox.

if you see me and call me a human, you are wrong, like how calling me “sir” is wrong. I am a vixen. I am a fox.”

Coined by feralfluidfox on September 28, 2024.

Archive of Post: https://archive.md/9HT5J

A post from clowncaraz-journal (mohicove) on Febuary 7, 2025:

“Using It Whichever Way I Want

Rambling about Holothere as a term.

It’s January 18th 2024.

Defrostedvertebrae posts:
Creating a term that would unite nonhumans that are fully in every way nonhuman would be helpful imo, i’ve seen a lot of creatures drop the label endel/cz because it’s not a delusion or because they feel uncomfortable having their identity pathologised from the get go but having little in terms of alternative tags/terms to use that are not instant death sentence to the wider community. (sadly) Even for those that are not in those categories, having a term that does not automatically imply humanity be it alternative or animalistic humanity i feel like it would be cool. a term that would also encompass things outside the realm of existing animals/creatures.

It gains 17 notes.

The brain child practically spoken into existence had been festering a month before it’s initial coining.

On February 16th, 2024, Defrostedvertebrae posts once more: On non-physical identities coexisting with physical ones

This post describes the way certain alters experience nonhumanity, whether physical or non-physical, speaking on their identity and how it affects the parts of their body – especially when they say that “[Their] body is physically nonhuman, specifically an antelope jackrabbit. this applies to all of [them], regardless of who’s fronting, and it is not a theriotype.”

At some point between here, Defrostedvertebrae makes a poll asking the community of alterhumans to provide them with help. The system was going to decide upon the name of the new term they thought of. The community went through multiple terms brought up between multiple different people through the reblog feature, such as Defrostedvertebre themselves, physical shifters, and many CLCZs.

On February 23rd, 2024, “holothere” is coined.

HOLOTHERE [hol-oh-thyr / hɒləʊðɪr] from greek: “holo-” = entirely ; “ther”= animal, beast noun 1. A self-identifier term for individuals who are physically and fundamentally nonhuman in every way. “I am holothere, i am and was born a selkie” “I am a bear holothere, but i also have a theriotyope so i identify as a therian when it comes to my non-physical animal aspects.”

Holothere was made to be used in a vague, expansive, and inclusive manner towards anyone who experiences physical nonhumanity – whether by delusions, fantasies, shifting, transitioning or dysphoria.

They say, ““Holothere” was made to act as another circle in a venn diagram with therian, otherkin and alterhuman communities, so that it acts as more of a descriptor and not a separate term.”

And this post earns 220 notes with positive responses.

March 6th, 2024, I, under the username objectoexpresso, posts:

We as a community don’t always have a connection with each other due to how scarce our environment is online and offline. As someone dedicated to making sure that I hear my community, I seem to sometimes forget that I am in the community myself and that I am able to step up and say things. That even if I am unprofessional with everything else, I can still talk about what the shifter community is looking out to be. Like @palevulture said, the physical inhuman community is in a ROUGH spot because we simply don’t care enough about this to be united. It’s another part of us, so it’s hard to ever put it into words about what it’s like. Go out and ask a human what it’s like living with hair. They’ll respond with basic answers, nothing too focused on how it feels to live WITHOUT it. And so putting it into words about how our physical inhumanity, something we usually don’t “awaken”, but more or so “confirm”, is hard to do. And even harder is having a community purely based off of our metaphysical/physical experiences. Because we’re often seen as “crazy”.

This post was inspired by palevulture, someone known to be involved in nonhumanity – specifically physical nonhuman and shifter communities. This post was created exclusively for asking the question; “Why do we not have a collective symbol? We have sublabels and subsets, but not a symbol for all meta/physical inhumans?”

This post was reblogged by starbound-joys, a dragon shifter, and harloqui, another shifter. They respond in agreement to the proposal, which led to a reblog being made. I say, “To look at emojis, we could use ⚓︎/🪝. An anchor (by Merriam Webster) is “a heavy object attached to a vessel by a cable, rope, or chain and dropped into the water to keep the vessel in place either by its weight or by its flukes, which grip the bottom.”

In response, a poll was made to ask a wider audience, especially those of the newly made holothere term.

Defrostedvertebrae adds their peace, saying that the humanity of the concept seemed to be less aligned with how physical nonhumanity was described. Me and them attempt to work on a symbol based on an animal’s painting but that doesn’t go anywhere unfortunately. Harloqui also responds, saying “Sorry to add mine late, but I have two ideas – the shooting star 🌠 and the anchor, with the delta next to it ⚓∆.”

The results of the post were:

[Anchor emoji gets 4.8% votes, anchor emoji and asterisk get 61.9% votes, anchor emoji and dot get 4.8% votes, and ‘another idea (comment)’ gets 28.6% votes. Final result is from 21 votes.]

These results and feedback results in another poll being made:

[Text reads, “So here are the options that they laid out for me in a new physical nonhuman poll.” The anchor emoji gets 4% votes, the 6 star flower gets 12% of votes, the star emoji gets 20% of votes, the anchor emoji and delta symbol gets 40% of votes, the 6 star flower and the star emoji gets 8% of votes, ‘Other (comment)’ gets 8% of votes, and ‘Combination of one or two (comment)’ gets 8% of votes. Final result is from 25 votes.]

As seen, 40% of the 25 votes were for the “anchor delta” made by Harloqui. It was official when defrostedvertebrae made another post with the symbol combined.

[Δ⚓︎ Anchor Delta ⚓︎Δ. symbol for physical nonhumanity regardless of preffered label. (combined image version; soft and sharp edges) The idea for the symbol itself was not created by me, I just combining the character versions into one.]

Stating they didn’t make the term.

The anchor delta is a combination of two things similarly to how holothere was chosen as a term because of “holo” – meaning entirely – and “ther” – meaning beast.

The suffix and prefix were taken from other sources, “ther” being inspired by “Therian”. The anchor is, in my opinion, not to be separated from physical nonhumanity for the reason of it’s meaning – the “anchor” as the physical nonhuman, “the heavy object” as the physical nonhumanity, and the “cable, rope, or cord” as the somatic connection.

It’s going to be an entire year in celebration of the coining of holothere soon.

So I wanted to make a post about my thoughts.

It seems as though, from a distance, there is something lost when the term is used. It seems to be forgetting what it is describing. There are many who often mess this up as well, where they will claim the term to mean being “physically nonhuman in every way, like spiritual and mental” despite the definition actually describing when one’s physical aspects, such as brain and skin, are nonhuman. That completely changes the usage of the term and how it is used at all, making it harder to know if it’s being used… wrong.

Holothere – from the perspective of a fableeri who helped coin it through speaking my mind, from the shifter who helped make the symbol, and as a person who has always been speaking for physical experiences since 2019-2020 – is a term used to describe the physical body, not an identity per se.

In the original coining post, the term was said to be created as a descriptor for your identity – and if used alone, it would be for pointing out what your body would be – physically nonhuman. It is beside alterhuman, otherkin and therian, with alterhuman as an umbrella term, therian under otherkin, and holothere as under otherkin.

Holothere, to me, is a body descriptor.

It was made to describe your body, which is why the variation “holotheric” is made to he used for your identity – which is your theriotype or kintype. Holothere is made to be an adjective the same way “physically” is used. When I see people say they are holothere, I immediately think that you are describing some aspect of your physical form as being nonhuman, not that your identity is physically nonhuman – because not everyone is physically nonhuman while having a holotheric body. I have a holotheric body but I am recognized as, by my fictional source, a human.

I am not… physically nonhuman in the way others are. My body is holotheric. My identity is holotheric. My fableeri identity is holotheric.

Id hate to sound as though I’d gatekeep the term, and yet, I have no other way to word this…

Use the term in the way that it was intended and use it as a way of rebellion against anti-physical rhetoric. For the sake of the holothere and physical nonhuman community. Use our definition right, try to read holotheric essays and talk to physical nonhumans. speak to people, speak to the beasts, please.

Do not use holothere as a way to be anti-physical shifter.

Do not use holothere as a way to be spiritually nonhuman.

Do not use holothere outside of referring to physical bodies and somatic symptoms.

Do not use holothere in a way that would put down any other person or beast, ever.

It is, by all means, a term for physical experiences only and is made for those in an already small and stigmatized group. Please be kind to us and let us speak for ourselves.

But hey, you can use it in whichever way you want too, do what you want.”