Greetings and salutations once more, friends!
So, three posts in and I’m addressing you all as friends, even though we may never meet. Well, a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet. So, instead of greeting you as strangers, I welcome you as friends.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know. Not all strangers are safe. Stranger danger and all that. Don’t worry, I still see the difference, and protect myself accordingly from the negative types. I still like to believe there are a lot more friendly strangers than stranger danger. I’m hopeful, not naive.
Over the past couple of days, you’ve met me, then you met my little self, and now you get to meet my furry self. I know what you might be thinking. How much stranger can this chick be? Well, pull up a chair and join me at the Mad Hatter’s tea party and see for yourself.
Like most kids, I grew up loving cartoons. Many cartoons used anthropomorphic animals. Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse, anyone? So, nothing really shocking there. Even into adulthood, I continued enjoying animation. Even some of the video games I played featured playable anthropomorphic characters. Still, they were often portrayed as new races to distance themselves from that stigma. Just take a look at the Ronso from Final Fantasy X (FFX). Even more recently, shows like RWBY, which feature characters with animalistic traits, Zootopia, where the characters are clearly anthropomorphic animals, and My Little Pony, where the characters are talking ponies.
When I played Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) in the late 1980s and early 1990s, my favorite character was a female weretiger. I identified with that character deeply, so when I gave up AD&D completely in 1996 and threw everything away, throwing out her character was like ripping a part of me away. I threw away other characters as well, but it was only this one that I had a special bond with. Looking back now, I see she served two purposes for me that I wasn’t aware of at the time. First was my female identity, which was, at that time, unknown and repressed. Second, it was my furry identity that I never even knew existed.
Then came Second Life. This is where I first began to embrace the woman inside. After almost a year and a few bad experiences, I wanted to start over. I could have created a new avatar, but I had already connected and found my identity. I couldn’t afford to leave her behind, so instead of starting over, I decided to change my appearance. I remembered my weretiger character that was so special to me, and wondered if I could bring her into Second Life. So, that’s what I did. I found an anthropomorphic tiger avatar and started looking for places that identified as furry hangouts in Second Life.
I’d never heard of furry or the furry community before this time, so this was all new to me. I met new friends who shared their own experiences in the furry community. My avatar’s appearance changed over time as I searched for what the furry community referred to as a fursona. The fursona, in simple terms, is the animal representation of my persona. I started with the tiger, switched to the fox, then to the civet, ocelot, and finally landed on the snow leopard. To add another layer of whimsy, I even added cybernetics to my fursona. Today, when I refer to my fursona, I’m referring to a shapeshifting, cybernetic snow leopardess. While that doesn’t exist in the real world, OBVIOUSLY, my Second Life identity reflects it. It’s one of the reasons I said she’s just an exaggeration of who I am.
My first, and only, attempt to bring my fursona into the real world was attending a furry convention in 2012. When I registered, I used the name of my fursona, which is my identity in Second Life, to register and attend. My appearance didn’t change, so I was still there under the appearance of my deadname. I only used the online name. I met a few others from Second Life at the event as well. One was a friend from that world who knew my offline identity, and he introduced me to others. I was welcomed and accepted, both as a woman and as a furry, even though I didn’t look like either.
So, now you see how I am Furry, as the title suggests. It isn’t really all that strange, is it? Like I said yesterday, I’m mostly harmless. I am a woman. I am a Little. I am a Furry. These are labels that just show me through a fogged window, though. As you read this, you will get to know me better and see more about who I truly am.
I am Jessica.