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As I recently mentioned, I'm going to be at Anthrocon this week. One of the things that people do at Anthrocon is commission badges of their fursonas --- it's a big enough social thing that the Anthrocon website has a primer on doing it, and most people you see wandering around are wearing badges that mostly cover their official badge, depicting their fursona [0] in some manner of splendor or adorability. It's a really cool tradition, and a great way for artists to pay their way to the convention, and an opportunity for people to support their favorite artists, whether they be old favorites ("Oh my god I recognize that style from printing out pictures on yerf in high school to piss off the computer lab supervisor") or new. There's only one problem: I don't actually have a fursona.
(If you've known me since, oh, say, 2000, and you're saying "Wait, what?" bear with me here for a while.)
For the non-furries in the room, a fursona is something between an aspect of self and a mask you wear while in furry spaces (cons, MUCKs, conversations, parties at my house, whatever). For some people it's "this is my identity! I am a sparkly blue cat with the following facial pattern! I have the following backstory and magical powers and I always wear a bowler hat!" while for others it's "this is my character, who I pretend to be in alternate spaces and have fun with." Some people have one, some people have more than one, and some people... like me, these days... really don't have any.
Oh, I used to have more than one! In high school [1] when I had this general sense of "this identity is clearly not right, but I don't know what is" this fascinating furry thing gave me an opportunity to try on different identities for size. I tried a bunch of things, a couple in person (inasmuch as you can pretend to be a fox in person, which is a surprising amount if the people around you are inclined to be nice about it), a few more online, a couple only in my head. (For a while in high school I imagined an aspect of myself as a six-inch blue catgirl named Random. That's your Useless Rax Fact for the day.) These were all useful for me in the process of becoming the person I wanted to be --- they let me try out different ways of acting, of perceiving, of thinking, of being perceived. And eventually I ended up ... just me.
I like to put on cat ears or wear a fox tail, sometimes, and enjoy the differences in all of those things I wrote about up there, but I don't think of myself as a different person, or even a different aspect of person. I'm just Rachel wearing cat ears, like I could be Rachel wearing a power suit or Rachel wearing jewelry. When I went to Anthrocon last year, I had a blast and a half, but one of the things that was uncomfortable was people asking me my name and "what I was." I would respond "Rachel!" and they would say, almost universally, "But what's your furry name?" [2] "Still Rachel." "OK, what do you look like?" I want to respond I look like this dammit, do you know how much work it took me to look like this. But they have no idea, so I usually just kind of shrug my shoulders. This makes commissioning badges difficult. :)
I've actually considered developing a fursona or two just so I can get in on this awesome art scene. Having the username "raxvulpine" a bunch of places makes furries (reasonably!) assume fox, which (unreasonably!) makes some of them assume that I will be willing to sleep with them. (The furry conception of foxes is frustratingly all yiff and no Reynard. [3]) I'm sort of tempted to pick some animal with aggressively non-sexual stereotypes, build a character around it, and work from there, except I have tons of fox and cat costume pieces already and I don't really want to put a lot of effort into being that woodchuck chick. ...Probably.
Someone I was hanging out with last year suggested I should just commission badges of random things, and it was more fun that way. I discovered myself to be too shy to actually do this, last year. I should do it anyway this year. Suggestions for random things I should ask for are greatly appreciated!
(Random aside: As I was writing this Cassandra handed me a piece of paper from a pile of stuff she was sorting where I had scrawled "Furries don't want to pass, but they can't help it" along with a bunch of Race for the Galaxy scores. Make of this what you will, I'm out of analysis for the evening.)
[0] Sometimes, plural. Fursonas? Fursonae? Just fursona again? I DON'T KNOW.
[1] When I wasn't taking advantage of there being time for Klax.
[2] I suppose I could say "Rax," but apparently there's another furry Rax, and after the first couple of times I was introduced as "Not that one!" I sorta backed off introducing myself that way. :)
[3] And no abnegation, and no Aesop, and no Stephen Dedalus, and... Seriously, where does this all foxes are in it only for the sex thing come from, and can I stop it? There are so many better bad assumptions to make about foxes!
(If you've known me since, oh, say, 2000, and you're saying "Wait, what?" bear with me here for a while.)
For the non-furries in the room, a fursona is something between an aspect of self and a mask you wear while in furry spaces (cons, MUCKs, conversations, parties at my house, whatever). For some people it's "this is my identity! I am a sparkly blue cat with the following facial pattern! I have the following backstory and magical powers and I always wear a bowler hat!" while for others it's "this is my character, who I pretend to be in alternate spaces and have fun with." Some people have one, some people have more than one, and some people... like me, these days... really don't have any.
Oh, I used to have more than one! In high school [1] when I had this general sense of "this identity is clearly not right, but I don't know what is" this fascinating furry thing gave me an opportunity to try on different identities for size. I tried a bunch of things, a couple in person (inasmuch as you can pretend to be a fox in person, which is a surprising amount if the people around you are inclined to be nice about it), a few more online, a couple only in my head. (For a while in high school I imagined an aspect of myself as a six-inch blue catgirl named Random. That's your Useless Rax Fact for the day.) These were all useful for me in the process of becoming the person I wanted to be --- they let me try out different ways of acting, of perceiving, of thinking, of being perceived. And eventually I ended up ... just me.
I like to put on cat ears or wear a fox tail, sometimes, and enjoy the differences in all of those things I wrote about up there, but I don't think of myself as a different person, or even a different aspect of person. I'm just Rachel wearing cat ears, like I could be Rachel wearing a power suit or Rachel wearing jewelry. When I went to Anthrocon last year, I had a blast and a half, but one of the things that was uncomfortable was people asking me my name and "what I was." I would respond "Rachel!" and they would say, almost universally, "But what's your furry name?" [2] "Still Rachel." "OK, what do you look like?" I want to respond I look like this dammit, do you know how much work it took me to look like this. But they have no idea, so I usually just kind of shrug my shoulders. This makes commissioning badges difficult. :)
I've actually considered developing a fursona or two just so I can get in on this awesome art scene. Having the username "raxvulpine" a bunch of places makes furries (reasonably!) assume fox, which (unreasonably!) makes some of them assume that I will be willing to sleep with them. (The furry conception of foxes is frustratingly all yiff and no Reynard. [3]) I'm sort of tempted to pick some animal with aggressively non-sexual stereotypes, build a character around it, and work from there, except I have tons of fox and cat costume pieces already and I don't really want to put a lot of effort into being that woodchuck chick. ...Probably.
Someone I was hanging out with last year suggested I should just commission badges of random things, and it was more fun that way. I discovered myself to be too shy to actually do this, last year. I should do it anyway this year. Suggestions for random things I should ask for are greatly appreciated!
(Random aside: As I was writing this Cassandra handed me a piece of paper from a pile of stuff she was sorting where I had scrawled "Furries don't want to pass, but they can't help it" along with a bunch of Race for the Galaxy scores. Make of this what you will, I'm out of analysis for the evening.)
[0] Sometimes, plural. Fursonas? Fursonae? Just fursona again? I DON'T KNOW.
[1] When I wasn't taking advantage of there being time for Klax.
[2] I suppose I could say "Rax," but apparently there's another furry Rax, and after the first couple of times I was introduced as "Not that one!" I sorta backed off introducing myself that way. :)
[3] And no abnegation, and no Aesop, and no Stephen Dedalus, and... Seriously, where does this all foxes are in it only for the sex thing come from, and can I stop it? There are so many better bad assumptions to make about foxes!