All of this talk about furries and what it means to be a furry… and then this word keeps popping up. ‘Fursona.’ What the heck is a fursona and why are they important to the community? Well just how there are many interpretations of the word “furry”, there are a boat load of the same for fursonas. As with my post about defining a furry I’m going to go over what a fursona means to me. That way I’m not stepping on toes of others.

So what is a fursona? Well to put it simply it’s how I represent myself within the fandom. It’s a character that I created with a lot of similarities to me and some differences as well. It’s just another way to express yourself. Some people base their fursona directly on themselves, the art even depicting their true body shape and type. Or some people go way off that line and depict themselves as something or someone they could never be in real life. It’s just a way to interact with others.

I don’t hold so true to my fursona that I actually believe I am that animal or character. However, I have grown into my character to the point of taking on some habits that I originally created just for the character. Mostly because I realized “hey this is fun, I wanna be like that.” Once I took on those similarities I felt even more like myself. So sometimes it’s a way to find out more about yourself.

A fursona can be anything. It can be an animal that you love or a critter that doesn’t actually exist. Two of my most recent representations of myself are hybrids of animals that would never actually bang. It can be directly based on you, or based on your past, based on your future. It can be someone you want to be, or someone you’d rather not be. It can possible and impossible. There are so many different things that a fursona can be that it’s impossible to actually talk about it all.

With that little lesson out of the way, I wanted to give you an example. The best examples I can give are my own experiences with my own fursonas. I’ve had three over the years that I’ve really held onto so I’m going to tell you a bit about all of them.

First, there was Alynis raccoon. She was my first fursona ever. She was the character I represented myself as when I found that first website with the chat client that my friend in highschool sent me to. She was shy and small and didn’t really know a lot about the world, much like myself when I first joined the fandom. I never had any art of her made and that was back when I was only doing landscape drawings so I never drew her myself, either.

Once I became more of myself within the fandom I started to develop another character. This time I knew more about myself and who I was in the fandom so this character ended up being based on me in a very close way. Most of my friends online even started calling me by her name. Jaenna was a wolf and racoon hybrid with horns. See? I told you they could be anything. She was still shy but also showed her rambunctious side once she felt open enough to be herself.

This character is what brought me even deeper into the fandom. I started to draw her. A lot. I learned more about her through doodling her every chance I got. I learned more about myself by interacting with other furries as Jaenna. Keep in mind that, again, I didn’t actually believe that I was a wolf raccoon hybrid. But I was starting to become Jaenna. That probably sounds weird to a lot of people but it was how I started to really discover more and more about me and the person I wanted to be. I changed a lot over the years, especially with my gender identity, while representing myself as this character online. And I wouldn’t be where I am today were it not for her.

And today I’m someone else entirely. My fursona is now what I like to call a ‘dogbeast’. His name is Dagga and he’s how I currently represent myself within the fandom. How I came into this character is a bit of a story, but one that is still easily told.

I was just starting to realize how my gender identity wasn’t allowing me to be… myself. I started referring to myself as gender fluid and ended up making a male version of Jaenna. But I was still going through so many changes in my life at the time that I started to feel less and less connected to Jaenna. Eventually I just stopped drawing her all together. I felt like she was no longer me and I was no longer her. I was changing, a lot, and I needed a way to show that change.

Around when I started my transition I was smoking a looooot of weed. And whenever I got high I would doodle pretty much non-stop. One day I wanted to draw a furry character, something I hadn’t done in years at that point, and ended up doodling my first images of Dagga. I drew him more and more whenever I smoked and I eventually realized that he was my representation within the fandom.

I very quickly became attached to the character and kept drawing him. It was the first time in so long that I was able to sit down and focus on art. So this character did more for me than just help me realize who I was. It helped me get back into art in a way that I thought I had left behind for good. Not only was he my path back into art but it was also how I learned more about my gender identity and my transition. It was funny, really, how well his creation and the start of my transition lined up.

So fursonas can be many things. They are something different to everybody. To me they’ve been my way into making friends, and recently they’ve been my way of self discovery. So sit down and start doodling or writing and you never know, you may end up with a fursona of your own!

(All art and characters depicted belong to me. Please do not use without my permission! :3)