We all have our favorite and most bizarre wedding stories; the tried-and-true-and-tired face in the cake gag, the speech that got a little too saucy, or the utter misery that permeated the whole ordeal because the bride and groom insisted on having a themed destination wedding.
The common denominator these stories is that you can usually see them coming. But, even if you could chalk this up as in line with wedding crasher stories, you still could never reasonably anticipate an uninvited guest in the form of a cow who’s actually a person.
Serving as the designated memory capturer by her soon-to-be-married bestie, TikTok‘s @xxshadowslightxx documented the moment that every bride dreams of; that definitive walk down the aisle. She also documented the moment that some brides may only ever experience as a fever dream; the realization that the cow, who has been innocently mulling about on the other side of the lake this whole time, isn’t actually a cow.
Indeed, that cow is a person cosplaying as a cow, who soon after makes the downgrade from cow to uninvited paparazzi.
In @xxshadowslightxx’s mind, this person is a furry, but the comments section isn’t too sure about that. Indeed, the majority of responses to the TikTok have added to the back and forth on whether this mystery cow person is a furry or a therian, which are two different things.
According to Safer Schools, a furry is a person who has an active and particular interest in anthropomorphic animal characters, and will often create one such character for themselves as their “fursona,” and subsequently engage within the furry community as that character (be it online or in real life with the help of a costume). A therian, by contrast, is a person whose spiritual identity is rooted in a sort of kinship with an animal, and on some level, does not feel internally human.
They are regarded as a subculture of otherkin, whose identities are rooted in a kinship with anything nonhuman, which can range from mythical creatures, to plants, to weather systems, to fictional characters, and even abstract ideas. Reddit‘s @_Dragon_Synth describes their experience as such:
In saying that, it’s hard to say where this person falls at a glance; their cow suit suggests furry, while their behavior/non-commitment to the suit suggests therian. On the other hand, maybe this is just a new tactic dreamed up by the paparazzi to blend in and snag more rural moneyshots. Whatever the case, it’s a wedding to remember.