! !! ! DISCLAIMER ! !! ! THE TOMORROWLANDS UNIVERSE (all files inside the 'story/' hierarchy) IS FICTION!! THE REST OF MY SITE ISN'T!!

Having said that, I will now explain it (and the reason I feel it's necessary) in probably more detail than you wanted to hear.

I am a dragon.
 

I am quite serious about my draconity. This is, in fact, one of the factors that led me to create the Tomorrowlands; any bleedthrough between my "real life" and the Tomorrowlands universe derives from my experiences with therianthropy in "real life", not the other way around. And yet, just because I'm maintaining an archive of fictional stories about dragons in a world much like today's, people are going to think I've gotten caught up in the stories a bit too much.

Well, my draconity is NOT a case of confusing the writer with the written.
 
Baxil is not a Tomorrowlands character. Baxil is me. I do not role-play as Baxil; I do not write stories about Baxil (except, occasionally, the true ones); I live as Baxil.

Of course, no matter what I say, I'm sure someone will walk away thinking of my reality as just another of my stories. It's rather a pity that any attempt to move ideas to the mainstream through fiction seems to have this effect. Consider X-Files; you can't have someone talk about being abducted by aliens these days without a comment drifting in from the peanut gallery, "You mean, you're like one of those people on that X-Files show?" Stop and think for a minute -- the fact is that alien sightings and abductions have been reported since before the invention of television. But no, anyone who claims that they were abducted by aliens now has to suffer the indignity of having the assumption made that they're just getting caught up in the fantasy of the TV show.

Which isn't to say that alien abductions are necessarily real, or only explainable by that hypothesis. Just that they shouldn't be judged by the fact that someone was a smart enough cookie to make a popular piece of fiction out of the idea.

In the same way, I don't expect everyone to believe my claims of draconity. I just ask that you consider it independently of the idea of the "Tomorrowlands universe." Which shouldn't be hard, considering: I have (as have an exhaustive list of other dragons I'm in contact with) thought of myself as a dragon in spirit for many years before the concept of Tomorrowlands was even a glimmer in my mind.

Certainly, there is a lot of fiction out there about dragons; some of it even proposing the idea of dragons in the real world. Don't let it invalidate what facts are there. The existence of fiction on a certain topic does NOT mean that all information on that topic is fiction.

This is why I am so adamant on the "no self-insertion" rule on the Contribution Guidelines page. As author of the Draconity FAQ and a frequent contributor to many dragon forums, I take my draconity very seriously. I don't want people thinking that I am a work of fiction, and "blurring the line" further by inserting "real therianthropes" into a fictional universe is inherently dangerous that way.

This is also why I'm so careful to partition the material on the Tomorrowlands universe from the rest of my site. ALL MATERIAL INSIDE THE 'story/' HIERARCHY IS FICTION. Most material outside of it is not. In particular, my 'draconity' directory explores the idea of REAL-WORLD draconity: people living, here on Earth, now today, as dragon spirits in human bodies. It is IN NO WAY fiction, and should not be construed as such just by its location on the same server as my Tomorrowlands stories.

Anyway. To summarize, and reiterate:

! !! ! DISCLAIMER ! !! ! THE TOMORROWLANDS UNIVERSE (all files inside the 'story/' hierarchy) IS FICTION!! THE REST OF MY SITE ISN'T!! Read the Draconity FAQ for more information on "real-life" dragons!

Thank you. I'll stop shouting now.