This is kind of a weird post as a hello again to my site, but after seeing a take that rubbed me very much the wrong way, in part because I've seen it many times since 2016, I wanted to write up: Fursona Changes.

Right now there's a meme-type quote-RT circulating Twitter about confessions that would make you "lose your furry card". Some of them are kinda stating the obvious, those "bold of you to state a common opinion" kind of things, not-so-hot/controversial takes (pedophilia is bad, don't fuck dogs, etc). I went to the original tweet just to peek at replies, and saw mentioned a couple times one that plagued me in the past.

Changing your fursona is literally the most insane thing. "Oh, I'm not happy with the character I've made for myself, let me create another". That's in the DSM-V as a disability.

There is so much to unpack here that I can only say "holy shit". Comparing deciding to change your imaginary representation of yourself on the internet is not a disability holy fucking shit. I do think I know what causes this kind of hot take response, however.

Until I actually went through one myself, I did not understand when people changed their fursonas. At first, at least. I did, a couple years prior to mine, finally start to understand that, yes, this is normal, it's not weird, it IS weird and shitty to be clingy to a previous sona. But having a sona change itself is fine. You're not obligated to keep the same imaginary avatar of yourself, and if anything, I think it's a good sign if it coincides with self-discovery in someone. You might realize that your avatar isn't really a good representation of you, or what you imagine your "best self" to be.

In my case, I had thought dragon was, partly because I started in the dragonkin communities, and that tight tie to the idea of being otherkin kept me thinking I had to like it, I was supposed to, had to like dragons, etc etc. It was kind of exhausting.

However once I separated from that kind of binding I better understood changes, better accepted others. I'd come up with kay in 2016, and by 2018 I'd changed over completely. When I "cut over", though, I started to receive that same sort of obsession: "Oh, but I liked Ceralor", or "but your dragon was hot I'm not hot for canines". It was like, what, do you think I'm gonna nix the character or the art? If I sold the character I'd sell the art with him, but I don't really think anyone's appropriate and the name's a handle for me anyway; it'd be hard to separate!

In keeping though, Ceralor stopped feeling representative of me, of "my best self", and he had been for some time, I realized, once I did decide to change. Canine had felt more accurate for some time, and the bouncy, wiggly, goofy nature felt far more at home for me upon picking it up more, it felt like me, actually me. I felt like I was free to really make Kay who I wanted him to be, to be my best self, instead of feeling constrained by expectations on a by-then-13-years-since-creation fursona.

I got a lot of those negative reactions, a lot of people who felt like I wasn't the same person. In truth, I really wasn't perhaps the same how they expected, but at the same time I realized I really was the same person and just understood myself better now. And the compliments I got on Kay outweighed it, comments about how much better he fit me, how cute he was, silly, "real", it's hard to say, but it made me so happy and warm feeling!

Anyway this was just a quick write-up thing because this was gonna be WAY too much text for Twitter. I'll try to keep this up-to-date more with posts!

tags: furry fursona