To Be Afraid

BOO! 
 
 
Did I getcha? Were you scared? I’ve always through that horror in literature is so interesting. It’s not like there aren’t phenomenal horror books, but the medium means that it’s so much harder to 
 
 
BOO!!! 
 
 
Hehehe, did I get you that time? If not, at the very least I had to try for the literary jump scare. It is Halloween after all! 
 
 
I love Halloween. It’s such a cool holiday. I’ve talked about it so extensively already, I don’t want to retread all that ground, but if you’re someone that also likes Halloween, did you know it’s also the zooiest holiday?
 
 
The thing that I think is so cool about Halloween is that it’s a chance to take something bad, and make it something good. Valentines day is about love, Thanksgiving is about being thankful, Christmas is about coming together with your family. Halloween is about darkness, evil, death and fear. Really, that’s what’s at the heart of it all. Fear. As humans, we’re intimately familiar with fear. The chills on the back of your neck, the hairs on your arms standing up, the tension in your gut. The voice in the back of your brain telling you that things aren’t actually going to be alright. 
 
 
I think as zoos we have a lot more to fear than the average person. We’re afraid of getting outed. Of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person, or accidentally letting just a little bit too much of ourselves out, which makes it possible for someone to track us down. I don’t mean to say that everyone feels the same, but I know a lot of zoos are scared to even join zoo spaces on alt accounts because it’s something that gives them a threat profile that wouldn’t exist otherwise. And that’s just being a part of a space, not to mention actually really diving into the community. Sharing yourself with it. Or even meeting up with other zoos in person. 
 
 
Because I’ve got a pretty big name at this point, I happen to talk to a lot of zoos that don’t have anything to do with the community. And that’s generally the reason that they give me when I ask why they haven’t made a zoo alt. Of course, sometimes it’s due to other reasons. They may not feel the need, they may have zoo friends in real life, or whatever else. But most of the time, it’s just fear. 
 
 
It’s something I hear a lot from creatives in the community too. There are so many talented artists, musicians, animators, creators of all kinds who are zoos. Some of them even have pretty big followings because of the quality of their art. But when I ask them why they don’t want to create art for the community themselves, the reason is usually that they’re afraid that they might have someone recognize their art from their main persona and connect the dots.
 
 
I mean hell, I’ve even had some conversations with people that work in animal welfare and veterinary practice who I would love to interview for the magazine, because I think even anonymously having some kind of voice of authority to ask some of the more detailed questions to could be a really amazing resource, but they’re so scared that if they ever actually did speak publicly in any capacity they’d immediately be ousted from their position and ostracized. 
 
 
It really sucks how much we let fear dominate the things that we’re willing to do with our lives, but also, I get it. I was at a furry party a few month ago talking with some friends. I finished chatting with them, and then went to go get a drink when someone I didn’t know stopped me. They were like “are you Tarro?” And I had a heart attack on the spot. I think they immediately noticed that I was thrown into distress and so they quickly followed it up with. “It’s okay if you are, I’m dating a dog.”, which did relieve my worries somewhat, although not fully. I asked them why they thought that I was Tarro, and they said that it was because they heard me say a phrase on Zooier Than Thou that they’d never heard before, and I said it again here to my friends. Seems like a crazy thing to use as evidence, but there they were asking me about it. 
 
 
I think about that a lot. The fact that no matter how hard I work to try and keep things about me private, there’s always things that you’re not thinking about. And when you’re out just having a good time, not paying attention, it’s impossible to know how much you’re letting slip. That’s TERRIFYING. It’s something that lives forever in the back of my head now. 
 
 
Let’s talk about what fear is for a second here. This isn’t an official definition, but I like to think that there are two kinds of fear. Active and passive. Active fear is just that. Something is happening right now and it’s your body’s reaction to it. Think of it like the flight in fight or flight. When that person came up and asked me if I was Tarro, I was in active fear. The other kind of fear is more like dread or anxiety. It’s the fear of what if. What if there’s someone standing inside the shower right now, hiding behind the curtain? What if I go ask that girl out but she rejects me in front of all of my friends? What if I try to climb this wall, but I fall down. You’re afraid of things that didn't happen yet. It might never happen in fact. It’s just the threat of it that's dreadful. 
 
 
Fear has an evolutionary purpose. If it didn’t, we likely wouldn’t feel it. Active fear tells you that the dangerous thing might harm you right now, so you need to override every other thought in your head and just get away, no matter what. Passive fear, on the other hand, serves a cautionary role. Maybe you should worry about the dark, because there could be something hiding there. Maybe you should be scared of climbing that tree because if you get really high you might fall. And horror as a genre takes advantage of both of these kinds of fear to succeed. Passive fear is the slow movement of a camera, the creak of a door opening, the reflection in a mirror distorting. Active fear is the jumpscare afterwards. If a movie tries too hard to just be active fear, just jumpscares, it gets tiring and boring, and the jumpscares either end up cheesy or annoying. Passive fear is the thing that builds the tension for the active fear to work. You need the slow build to make the height really hit.
 
 
The opposite is true as well though. A horror movie that’s all just passive horror would probably be pretty lame too. Like a beat that keeps building but never drops, or a roller coaster that slowly goes up a hill, and then slowly goes down it after. You never get the actual horror out of it, you just feel kinda uneasy for a while. And I think in a lot of ways, life is like that too. Most people probably don’t have a lot of active horror in their lives. I mean, think about it for yourself. When was the last time that you were scared of something real? Something tangible. A thing that was actively happening. I know for me, it’s been a while.
 
 
However, passive fear is all the rage nowadays. I feel like the people I meet more often than not have some kind of depression or anxiety. They have so much passive fear that it ends up being something that really limits them. Because that’s the thing about passive fear. Active fear is great in that it’s a short burst of action to quickly get you out of a situation. Passive fear lingers. You can be passively scared of something for your entire life, never having that fear resolve.
 
 
I think about it like math. When people decide things, usually it’s on the basis of the cost of the thing versus the benefit. If something is going to give you a large benefit then maybe you put up with some cost, just like you probably wouldn’t put up with a large cost for a low benefit. But passive fear tips the scale of that equation. To use an example, say that there’s a karaoke night at your favorite bar, and you’re thinking about whether you want to go up and sing a song. The potential cost is that you aren’t very good, and people don’t enjoy your performance. The potential benefit is that you might be incredible and everyone loves it and cheers. Realistically, it’s pretty even. But fear comes in and amplifies the negatives. Even if you're sitting there watching someone bomb, and at the end they just get awkward applause and then leave the stage, who knows if that’s going to happen to you? What if you sing, and then you’re judged forever by people who you want to like you? What if you’re forever known as the person that butchered “Somebody Told Me” by The Killers during karaoke night, and they laugh behind your back about it for the rest of your life? That’s not rational, it’s not realistic, but it doesn’t matter. Our brain is incredibly good at finding things to worry about when it wants to. And frequently, when we don’t. 
 
 
When it comes to zoosexuality, for the most part what we’re talking about is passive fear. Unless you are actively in the process of getting doxxed, you’re scared more about the what ifs. 
 
 
The thing about passive fear though, is that it’s a fucking liar. For most people, the vast majority of times that that feeling kicks in, it’s giving you a false positive. It’s telling you to be scared of something that’s only scary in your head. Not every time, mind you. But, probably close to always. And even when it is real, that doesn’t mean the thing that you’re looking at is bad. I get scared when I meet zoos in real life. I get terrified in fact. But that doesn’t mean that meeting zoos is a bad thing. It just means that there’s technically a world where potentially it could be bad, and the part of your brain responsible for fear signals starts to sound the alarm as loudly as it can. 
 
 
I think most things in life that are incredible require you to pass through a little fear to get there. Certainly all my best experiences have. My top 5 memories of all time came about directly or indirectly because I was willing to challenge my fear and just go for it. 
 
 
The thing about fear as a feeling is that it’s not like hunger or thirst, or exhaustion. It’s a feeling that you actually can beat. You can challenge fear, and decide that you don’t want to feel it anymore. And, I think it’s really good to do that sometimes. Frequently, media loves to portray bravery as this very tropey idea where you just believe in yourself hard enough and then all your problems go away. In my opinion, that’s kinda bullshit. I think learning how to fight fear is a skill. It’s something you have to practice. I’ve had the pleasure of running panels at furry conventions before, I don’t mind public speaking. But, if I was suddenly thrust on a late night show recording live for an audience of millions of people, I’d probably be terrified. Because the scale of the fear is so much bigger. But, if you keep doing it, and keep forcing yourself, eventually the thing you were once afraid of stops being scary. You train your brain to realize that there isn’t a monster waiting there in the dark. 
 
 
It sounds corny, but I really do recommend you try this in your every day life. It’s easy to give up on things because they’re scary, but I think there’s something amazing about being able to confront your fears, and show that you’re stronger. And the sense of euphoria you get from it feels like nothing else. Talk to a stranger, put yourself out there, do the thing that you’ve always wanted to do, but always chickened out of. I’m not saying that it’s going to go perfectly, or even go well, but I think you learn a lot more from pushing past your fear than you do letting it beat you. 
 
 
And, to bring it all back together, this goes doubly for all the zoos that are reading this. We live with so much fear all the time. And that fear can consume you so easily. It can make it seem like you’re totally alone, and that you have no hope of having a good, normal life where you can be happy. But you can be happy, with friends and people who love you. But the first step to getting there is being able to fight your fears. 
 
 
And man, this is extra true if you really in your heart want to see a world where we can change social perceptions on who we are. I mean, even that idea is terrifying. But the steps that we’re going to have to take to get there? Each just as horrifying as the last. We’re going to have to put ourselves out there into the spotlight. We’re going to have to face people that hate us to their core. We’re going to have to deal with a wave of disdain and disgust like nothing ever before. I’m scared as hell of that. It’s everything that I’m scared of now, turned up to 1000%. 
 
 
But that’s why I’m fighting my fears now. Because I know that there’s going to be a time where we’re all going to need to be brave. And I want to make sure I know how. 
 
 
If you’re someone that’s reading this that’s thought about becoming part of the community. Someone who’s thought about creating things that show your love for animals. Someone who’s always wanted to do something, but just couldn’t, this is for you. 
 
 
You wake up one day and there’s a door in your house where there was never one before. It blends right in with the rest of the house, the door the same painted color as the rest, the same golden hinges. It’s in the hallway headed from your bedroom out to the living space, just past the bathroom. You’ve lived in this house for as long as you can remember. You’re sure that there’s never been a door there. And yet, there is. Sitting there. Closed, no sound coming from the other side, door knob gleaming in the dim light of the hall. 
 
 
There could be anything on the other side of that door. A monster maybe. A body. A ghost. Or, it could be something good. A portal to a magical land with talking animals and singing trees. Or, maybe you just forgot. Maybe the door leads to a small linen closet that you just never used, and now you’re working yourself into a panic about it. 
 
 
You could spend the rest of your life choosing to not open that door. And that’s fine. It’s not like your life would change in any way. I mean hey, if you’re really worried about something getting inside, you could bolt the door shut. But, is that really what you want to do? Do you really want to pass up the chance to know what’s on the other side? It could be something scary, absolutely. Maybe opening the door is the last thing you ever do. But, what if it’s not? What if opening that door changes your life for the better? 
 
 
If you decide to open the door, you don’t have to do it blindly. You can be prepared. Make sure you’re stocked up, maybe hit the gym a couple times just in case. You can open the door at your pace, making sure that you’re giving yourself time to back away if you need to. And who knows, there’s always the chance that you can close the door again if you don’t like what you see on the other side. There’s a million ways to be ready to open the door, where as if you leave it closed, that’s it. 
 
 
If it wasn’t obvious, the door is an allegory for opening the door to the community. And I hope that one day everyone is brave enough to find out for themselves what’s on the other side. To walk up to the door, palm sweating as they slowly reach for the knob. The door creaking like a banshee as slowly they pull it open, peeking ever so timidly around the now open barrier, staring into the darkness that lays beyond…
 
 
BOO! 
 
 
Happy Halloween dear readers! And if you haven’t seen it already, watch Obsession, it’s really good! See you next time! 
 
 
 
 
 
Article written by Tarro (October 2026) 
Find them at https://twitter.com/hereforthezoo 
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