project_shift | Recent Entries

This community hasn't seen a new post in a long time (when it was only over on LiveJournal, and now on DreamWidth), so have an update on Project Shift, albeit copied from the site's main page:

*Moved site to Sonverrid.org for hosting, but project-shift.org address will continue to work.

*The Spanish site will be down until converted to WordPress (content added to WordPress manually), yet will not remain up-to-date with the English site articles and content until a new Spanish translator can be found and translates the remaining articles/content. Sorry for the inconvenience of this. [**If you would like to volunteer as a translator for the Spanish site, or would like to help translate Project Shift into another language, please contact Sonne.]

*Added article "Fictives and Therians" under the Therianthropy page.

*Added Betwixt & Between as a site under Resources. Removed Awereness Forums from Resources (due to site being extensively down), and fixed broken links.

On a more personal note about the site's move, I feel more comfortable with it (and The Werelibrary, as they were both moved there) being on Sonverrid.org where I can better manage the site(s) and I feel the reliability of them staying up and online consistently will be better there. Due to other personal matters, the previous homes of Project Shift and Werelibrary made it difficult for me (and the other co-maintainer) to access the site via backdoor FTP and it just wasn't reliable to leave the sites there anymore. So they should be good to stay online for awhile to come (at the least Project Shift; Werelibrary is currently being rebuilt) as long as I remain 'around' and able to pay for the hosting costs every two years. And I'm glad to finally be able to utilize some more of the mass amount of space I have available on my site/host instead of it only containing The Sanctuary (my personal writings site).

By the way, on a related note, I'm considering making an RSS feed for Sonverrid.org that will include feed-posts whenever I make updates to any of the four sites there. I'll let people know for sure about it whenever I implement it officially.

Current Mood: accomplished

felkes.livejournal.com

I don't know if people still check this group or not, and I know I'm really new to the group (and LJ in general), but I occasionally check up on project shift's site to see if any new articles have been posted and have been a little disappointed to not find any. But recently I just did a big study with my mate and wrote an essay of sorts on my findings and I wonder if maybe Project Shift would be interested in posting it.

Being a pretty devout Christian I've always had a problem with the typical "animals don't have souls" doctrine because I've felt my therianthropy to be very spiritual, but I also felt that by feeling it was spiritual I was going against my faith. So this was the focus in my study, to take an in depth look at what the soul really is (in the context of Christianity) and how therianthropy fits into it. I touch on psychological therianthropy in the beginning then go into spiritual therianthropy where I actually look at the Hebrew words used in the creation story and break apart things that way.

I already have it posted on the Therian Discovery Forum, but I'd be honored to have it listed on project shift too. Since I had so much trouble for so long with my faith saying that I can't have my identity (and not wanting to forsake either one), I'd like to help prevent others who may be in the same boat from having the troubles I did.

Here's a link to the essay on TDF (therian discovery forum) if anyone here cares to read it and maybe give me some feedback. ^^;
http://theriandiscovery.org/christian-therianthropy/

Current Mood: nervous

sonne-windsoul.livejournal.com

Well, it's a long overdue update, but an update nevertheless :P. I fixed up some things on the Project Shift site--a few broken links, added some links under Resources--and I added an essay in the Community section by Spectre on terminology.

I still have a few articles for the site that are either in progress or I plan to start sometime (I've been out of writing-mode for the most part since last fall), primarily an essay on polytherians and hopefully an eventual essay on personal symbolism related and contrasted to therianthropy. Along with those, I've been continuing to look for more contributions in the form of essays/articles, topic suggestions, and/or some more questions for the Q&A page (almost every time I think of one, I forget it before I get the opportunity to write it down somewhere : /).

So, to give a run down of the main things we're currently looking for to add to Project Shift, I'm just copy-pasting this from my Werelist thread:

Materials and writings currently still sought for the PS site:

~other, various explanations for the possible cause(s) and origins of therianthropy

~introduction to the online therianthropy community: things new people to the therian community should be aware of, advice regarding interaction and reading in it, and other related material (should be written in a fairly neutral, non-ranting, non-bashing manner)

~more questions to be answered in the Question & Answer article (suggestions can be about rather commonly asked questions or common topics or misconceptions that come up on boards/sites about therianthropy)

~information on animal polyshifters and/or polymorphs, and/or animal empathy shifts (a couple of people have mentioned interest in doing this one, yet no official takers on doing it yet, so it's still open)

~therianthropy in relation and contrast to daemonism

~introspection and soul-searching to figure out one’s theriotype(s): different methods and advice (we currently have Akhila’s “Soulsearching and Keep Walking” essay linked, but we’d like to also have an article on this subject documented on the Project Shift site, and something more succinct yet still helpful and informative)

~telling others about one’s therianthropy: advice, words of caution, and so forth

~information and advice on Howls—including things to be cautious about, suggestions in arranging a howl, basic information on them, etc.

~and other subjects and ideas (feel free to suggest things; we want to know what other types of information about therianthropy that members in the community are looking for in articles)

Additional things that I may work on writing gradually, or that I’ve already written and will be posted to Project Shift sometime:

--analyzing the use of shifting terminology (finished; undecided about adding it)
--analysis of ‘types of therianthropy’ terms (finished; undecided about adding it)
--therianthropy compared to personal animal symbolism
--therianthropy compared to totemism (hopefully a relatively succinct essay)
--possibly an article that lists and maybe briefly describes a wide variety of possible factors contributing to the prevalence of wolf therians in the therian community and certain other prominent (in numbers) theriotypes (not sure if I'll end up writing it, but maybe)
--**general essay on polytherians (in progress)

That's all I can think of now for an update; there's not much to add to the site until either I and/or others finish more material to put there, so we'll have to see how things progress there. And I so need to update my own personal site--I've neglected it :(.

Current Mood: productive

aethyriek.livejournal.com

Usual stuff first! (: We're still always looking for contributions. There's some specifics here, but any ideas or thoughts or concerns you have regarding PS are always welcome to be shared.

Now, the way cooler thing (I think). Nomad contacted me on Werelist the other day, along with various other authors on PS, to ask to translate our articles to Spanish. I thought this was really awesome (and big applause for Nomad just for the size of such an undertaking! =D ). He also was curious if we could host the translations and since I was thinking about suggesting it too that works out nicely. He thought it might be an idea to have a parallel site in Spanish, kind of like other sites have language options. This seemed like an even more awesome idea because then people who cannot read English would have access to information about therianthropy without having to make use of translator programs a lot of the time.

I really liked the parallel site idea. We could have a front page with language options maybe, or just a drop down bar; lots of ways to go about it. And if down the road other people come along and would like to translate into even more languages, we can just slowly build from there. Thoughts?

I don't imagine anyone will have too much trouble with this, since PS can host the articles anyway, even if as a pseudo-subdomain sort of deal, which is almost the same thing, but we're all about opinions here, so share away! (:

sonne-windsoul.livejournal.com

I'm planning to make a multi-article update to the Project Shift site hopefully sometime in the next few weeks. Considering I haven't posted any further updates here in awhile, I'm copying and pasting an "articles sought" list that I have posted over on Werelist. As also, current articles/essays I have planned right now for the update are a writing by Lenowill on "Levels of Integration", one by Spectre called "Lost in Translation: Getting Over Terminology", and one or two essays by me pertaining to therianthropy terminology.

I'm also wondering if anyone else has more suggestions for article topics or links (general site/forum links for the Links section or specific essays/writings to be linked to in the "Further Reading" parts of each section)?

"Project Shift and its development are only made possible by the help, effort, and contributions of people past or presently associated in some way with the therian or otherkin communities, and in order to add more information to the site we need people to write articles/essays and suggest new topics, links, or other material to be added to it."

Materials and writings currently still sought for the PS site:

~other, various explanations for the possible cause(s) and origins of therianthropy

~introduction to the online therianthropy community: things new people to the therian community should be aware of, advice regarding interaction and reading in it, and other related material (should be written in a fairly neutral, non-ranting, non-bashing manner)

~more questions to be answered in the Question & Answer article (suggestions can be about rather commonly asked questions or common topics or misconceptions that come up on boards/sites about therianthropy)

~information on animal polyshifters and/or polymorphs, and/or animal empathy shifts

~therianthropy in relation and contrast to daemonism

~introspection and soul-searching to figure out one’s theriotype(s): different methods and advice (we currently have Akhila’s “Soulsearching and Keep Walking” essay linked, but we’d like to also have an article on this subject documented on the Project Shift site, and something more succinct yet still helpful and informative)

~telling others about one’s therianthropy: advice, words of caution, and so forth

~information and advice on Howls—including things to be cautious about, suggestions in arranging a howl, basic information on them, etc.

~and other subjects and ideas (feel free to suggest things; we want to know what other types of information about therianthropy that members in the community are looking for in articles)

( Read more... )

Current Mood: productive

sonne-windsoul.livejournal.com

I finally got around to finishing up some refinements to the site, after Aethyriek and I got about 11 articles/essays added onto there two or three weeks ago. We didn't have an actual categorization system for the pages when it came to uploading them, so I went through today and made folders for the three main categories and updated links (including navigation links) based on those changes; though it's possible I may have missed something and didn't properly change a link or few, so if anyone catches one of those errors, let me know so I can fix it. The Resources page has many more links on it now, and its own categories, with more links planned to of course be added later. There are still some minor tweaks that need to be made to the site, like some of the boxes/modules that are empty, and those will be changed after we either figure out what to put in them or decide on some other specific use for them other than what they are currently titled with. Also, the contributors list has been updated accordingly to reflect the authors who gave us permission to post their article(s); and another thanks to them all for that : ). Plus, I mentioned on the index page that Project Shift is not "under construction" anymore, because I feel we've built it up enough, and gotten enough articles on it now that it's primarily going to be normal, casual updates at this point--so a big "woot" in celebration there xD.

After I gather up another list of more materials and information that we're still seeking, I'll post it here.

Current Mood: accomplished

sonne-windsoul.livejournal.com

I finally finished it, after giving myself more than enough time to sort through my thoughts on it and decide exactly what I wanted to include in it. Turns out though, about half of it is new material that I typed specifically for the essay and the other half is made up of paragraphs pulled directly from my posts on a Werelist thread about becoming a therian, considering I had some good parts of my thoughts and argument laid out in that thread. I think this maybe best in the Community section of the site because although it could fit in the Therianthropy or Introspection sections, it's primarily aimed at the community in general and has to do with community standards and stigma about the topic. As usual, feedback is welcome.

( article under cut )

Current Mood: accomplished

sonne-windsoul.livejournal.com

Okay, update from me. I finally got my Q&A section finished (minus some tweaking and addition I'll do to the 'become a therian' question after I actually get that article finished on the topic), which is pasted below, under cut; and of course more can (and will be) added later on. I composed a list for my reference of articles and essays from other authors I think would be good on Project Shift, and I will be contacting those people about permission use (likely won't get to all of them this weekend, so it will be a somewhat gradual thing). At this point, I have 16-20 articles in that list, though I'm unsure how many I will get permission for, and a few I'm thinking we can just link to them in the appropriate section (like Community, Therianthropy, etc.); most I'd rather post the text as opposed to a link. When I get further along on those permissions I'll either update here or contact Tawn in email about the outcomes.

Some suggestions for the actual PS site:
--the Physical Shifting article citations need to be fixed up, because right now they are odd looking numbers sitting at the end of sentences. They would probably be best as square bracketed numbers (with or without them linking to the correlating number in the citation section). Also, it's more practical to have in-text citations made from the same source as being the same number, rather than having the same source taking up multiple numbers in the citation list, and that each different source should be listed by a separate number (thus if a sentence references something from two sources, both/all numbers would be listed within the in-text citation brackets).

--I also think that each category tab should show an article index page (linked to each article under that category) as the main page when the tab is clicked. The side navigation bar can include some key article links, such as for the Therianthropy section, the "What is Therianthropy?", "Terms and Definitions", and "Types of shifts" (and maybe the Q&A) should probably be kept on that side navigation because they are main, key articles that would probably be some of the most viewed. The index page for the Therianthropy section can include the remaining (and sidebar links, too) articles that fall under that category. I'm unsure how exactly to divide that up for the Introspection and Community sections because there's currently nothing in them : / (thus that will have to be figured out later).

--Links need to be added in the Resources section, and I'm working on compiling a list of some and will likely make a separate post for that sometime, of which hopefully some other people will suggest some links to add.

( Question and Answer completed, thus far; feedback is welcome )

Current Mood: productive

sonne-windsoul.livejournal.com

Tawn previously posted a list of preferred and also needed types of writings and information for this Project, so while I'm posting anyway, I'm running back over the list and noting what we have so far and what we need (or need more of).

Completed so far:
~Overview/intro to Project Shift
~Tawn's "What is Therianthropy?" article
~Strill's "Are You a Therian?" article
~Essay on physical shifting (by Tawn)
~Various shifting and therianthropy terms (mainly mine; I'm adding some more in this entry as well)

Needed, preferred, or in the process of being written:
~Introspection on therianthropy and one's particular theriotype(s); advice, explanations of it, techniques, etc.
~Alternate (non-therianthropy) forms of animality, animal connections, and animal spirituality (totemism, daemonism, personal symbolism, etc.; these could be written in separate articles, or any/all of them combined in a single article, depending on how the author(s) want to go about it)
~'Shifter's Disease'
~Advice on sharing with family, friends, and other people
~The therian community--interactions in it, advice, its changes and developments over time, etc.
~'Becoming a Therian' (I'm currently working on this one, whenever I can finish it up to a satisfactory extent)
~Question & Answer or an "FAQ" (I have some questions listed in this entry for it, and feedback for some more is encouraged; I, or with others too, need to finish writing answers for the questions)
~Purpose and problems of using therian labels and definitions (I might try to write that one sometime)
~Various possible origins/causes of therianthropy
~And other essays of advice, therian-related information, or personal experiences that contributing authors would like to share on Project Shift

In that latter section, the ones not written or completed yet, I feel that we need to only finish a few of them before Project Shift should be ready to go online and public on its site, and from there those articles and information can be added to with more writings, little by little. I'd love to see this project in the next few months or less to make that step into the information being on the site for it and thus beyond just this LJ community, although we need to still at that point maintain this LJ group and encourage people on the PS site itself and other places to make more contributions of information and writing for the site so that it can grow further. We need to take PS from a concept and gathering of potential articles, to having it officially go online and public, to be developed and built further after that; but I think we're still a few writings/articles short of that right now.

Onto some ideas and Q&A things I've thought to put in articles:

( Questions and Answers )

A few more definitions I wrote (and I can also make short, concise ones for more quick reference parts of the site):

( More definitions )

And also, at some point I wrote up some paragraphs of more information on Project Shift, which can be used on the site if desired:

( further Project Shift info )

Current Mood: productive

strill.livejournal.com

Title: Are You A Therian?
About: Basic essay on therianthropy, what is it, and what it isn't.
Keywords: therianthropy, definition, informative

( Are You A Therian? )

7deadlysins.livejournal.com

I dunno if an introduction is really necessary, but whatever.

Some of you may recognize me from Werelist, I went by "corvus corone" over there. I've also been known as Adagio and carrioncrowx, and from wayyy back in good ol' days, you may remember me as Hesperus or Hephaestus. Yep... I change names a lot.

Anywayyy. I've always kinda wanted to start a therianthropy site geared towards informing new people about the terms and introspection and all that, simply because there wasn't a really good "newbie" resource when I first started learning about therianthropy *shrug*

If I can help out in any way, let me know. If not, I look forward to seeing this get all set up and running :)

sonne-windsoul.livejournal.com

Considering the notable lack of decent places to go and look up therianthropy terms anymore, and that the few left that can be dug up somewhere online are generally way oversimplified or outdated, I ended up writing these definitions a few months ago for someone else who was looking for presentable definitions to put on a therianthropy information site. So, I decided that maybe they could prove useful for Project Shift. Also, if anyone has any other therianthropy terms they'd like to see defined for this project, you can mention them here, and if I don't feel comfortable or otherwise interested enough in writing a definition for one (or more) of them I'll let you all know and it/they can be added to a list of definitions needing to be written.

( Some therianthropy definitions )