The history of my fursonas! 🐱

I’m in an especially infodump-y mood at the moment and I watched a video about fursonas that inspired me (Shoutout to Pocari Roo’s channel!) so here we go ^o^ 

Click under the cut to read the whole enchilada! (It’s a long post, make sure you have the appetite for it first xD)

I first learned about the furry fandom in about 2013-14 from some friends at school! Granted, the two teenage boys I talked to a lot were more obsessed with the... sexual side of that xD I won’t go into that though because that would involve me talking about more uncomfortable stuff >.> I also had another friend that was such a huge influence to me and they’re a big reason that I still draw fuzzy animals to this day! Their fursona at the time was named Icy and I thought that character was the freakin’ coolest. I remember going home after talking to them, filled with inspiration and making my very first fursona!

Her original name was Rogue Feather, but the name Scarlett came later and ultimately stuck way better! Her design was simple, a red fox with a purple bandana! Not much thought was put into her, I just put together what I thought a typical fursona would look like :P I didn’t draw her much since I was way more focused on MLP and my ponysona Starfruit, but I still enjoyed doodling her!

Shortly after Scarlett, I created Citrus the cat! To be honest, she didn’t really represent me other than being a cat xD Her design was actually based off of a girl that I had a crush on at that time, but that’s a whole other story >.>

Also, it was coincidental that Twinkie has elements from both of these beginning characters, I just noticed that making this post! I learned that I loved cats from creating citrus, and I loved drawing Scarlett’s wings and bandanas so I suppose it was natural that my current fursona would have all of these traits :P

Well, months pass after posting the first drawings of Citrus and Scarlett on my Instagram, and at this point I decided to try taking up digital art! I downloaded FireAlpaca for free (still my program of choice x3) and worked really hard at drawing with only my mouse!

My friend that inspired me to draw more furry characters had changed their fursona over from a bright sparkledog-ish color scheme to another character with muted browns and oranges. Inspired once again, I designed another cat character to represent myself!

Meet Macchiato (or Mac for short)! They were made when I switched my focus from My Little Pony to furry characters, and I moved from Instagram to DeviantArt as my main art site. 

When I made Mac, I was close to beginning high school and I questioned a lot about my identity, mainly my gender and sexuality :P For a period of time, I pushed aside my adoration for ponies, Pokemon and colorful things in favor of things I thought were “cooler” and more boyish. A large part of this was my complicated relationship with my gender identity, but also because I thought I had to act more mature... so I expressed this by drawing myself as a cat? It was complicated xD

Anyways, while I have a soft spot for Mac, they’re sort of my own Rex Dangervest if that makes sense :P I mean, they were my first expression of feeling neutral to gender which was a big deal for me, but when I look at their drab colors it sort of makes me sad that I didn’t have much fun designing them. (I did have a blast drawing that pixel reference though, I remember that xD)

I also created a few more furry characters just for the fun of it! I won’t post pictures of all of them for the sake of length, but they were Chamomile the fennec fox, Minx the cat, Caira the alien dog, Pfeffer the bunny, Flicker the bat (who I should draw again sometime >.>) Mitzi the dog and... Whatever animal Skyler was supposed to be xD I made all these characters before I attempted to make a fursona that I felt more connected with...

Along came Clash the cat, an even more depressing character than Mac for me to look at xD I was considerably depressed at this point from the pressure of high school and my identity issues, the droopy eyelids and chaotic color scheme of him sort of reflect this. 

It’s a good thing you can’t read his description in that screenshot, Believe me, but I think I should quote a part of it because it greatly represents how I felt about myself during the time period when I made him.

“If you were to dissect his brain, you’d see something much like somebody’s tangled collection of thread and yarn. Colorful, unkept, and full of pushed aside potential.”

Ouch!!

Well, after a period of depressing fursonas I played that one cat icon creator game that circulated on Tumblr for a while, and I made my favorite old fursona! I think that he had a lot in common with Twinkie and I used them more than everyone else beforepaw.

Here’s Cetrada, my little Nickelodeon slime cat xD I named them after the Italian citron-flavored soda that my friend Francesca (Love ya buddy!) sent to me in the mail! That soda is actually spelled Cedrata, the misspelling of the name was not a creative choice but an actual dumb mistake xP 

I genuinely still love this character, I nicknamed them Limey since it’s simple and cutesy like them, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever use them again. Think of them as teenage Twinkie I guess xD I love ya Cetrada, you were a good kitty <3

Eventually Cetrada grew stale for me and I went through a couple of other fursonas. I don’t have much to say about them since they were pretty short lived, but I’ll post a single picture of each of them! I’m getting a bit tired of making mini collages of them anyways :P

While Reese’s design and colors are a bit awkward, I genuinely adore their mini companion Mallow the bat :P They look like pistachio pudding, what a cutie!

Ugh, this fursona stresses me out to look at too xD I mean arguably they’re the closest in design to Twinkie (yellow cat with angel wings and star knee markings) but they remind me of a rough time I suppose? I drew a couple pictures of them looking more sexualized and with a more slim body type when in reality I was overweight and scared of intimacy... they just remind me of an unhealthy period of my life @_@ I must have felt that too though, I dropped this fursona pretty quickly.

I do actually like Kit even though I used him very briefly, I was starting to have WAY more fun with bright colors in my drawings! Sure he’s a bit too pastel 2015 Tumblr, but I do still like that pink and yellow combo ^w^

Eventually I grew sick of my DeviantArt and mostly just posted art on my main Tumblr where I got super into the kidcore scene! I had rediscovered my love of fun colors and sparkly eyes, kidcore sparked a new me! I wasn’t doing fantastic in life, but I developed more optimism and a genuine love for simple things which grounded me a lot. This was such a wild part of my life, through reblogging pictures of rainbows and Pokemon and slime I gained over 2,000 followers O.O Two of my closest friends told me that they found me by my influence in the kidcore Tumblr community back around 2016 and were intimidated to talk which is just nuts to me x’D

Anyways I’ll try not to go on a tangent about that anymore, but 2016-17 was wild! I should give a shoutout to my very first sparklesona Cosi, but he was made only barely before my true fursona...

That’s right babey, the one... The only!!!

HE’S FINALLY HERE! Twinkie, the fursona I truly felt a personal connection with. I mean, he’s everything I love bundled into one! Pikachu has been my hugest comfort ever since I was four years old so naturally I would have to incorporate it into my fursona somehow! I also gave him a bandana, my favorite accessory to draw on furry characters, and wings! Of course I love rainbows too so I gave him rainbow wings..... But I tweaked his design since the colored wings made him more bird-like. Nothing against birds of course, but I thought plain white angel wings were simpler and more iconic for him! I did give him a touch of rainbow later with his tag design! I also scrapped his red dot eyebrows and his tail bandana, but overall I loved the character I made! I was thrilled to have a fun cartoon kitty that I could use to express myself :3

Before him my only true-feeling ‘sona was Starfruit the pegasus, it was fulfilling because I feel like when I made Twinkie, I started to find myself! 

Twinkie did go through a couple redesigns including a semi-drastic color change sometime in early 2018, but I really do feel content with the way he looks right now! In Twinkie I see friendliness, optimism, and a caring heart which is what I strive for! He represents the journeys I took to be more comfortable with myself and he radiates the confidence that I hope to achieve one day as well >:3 I mean it is possible I could change him for a new fursona or even flat out drop him in the future, but after 3 strong years I think Twinkie will stay a part of me for a while ^w^

Anyways, if you’ve read all of this, THANK YOU!! This was a really personal post and I think it’s fascinating to look at my own self progression this way, I hope somebody gained something from this but if it was just for me that’s okay too xD

If anyone read all of this looong post and wants to make a similar post, PLEASE tag me! I’ve been so interested in fursonas and how people see/represent themselves through cartoon animals, isn’t it a wild phenomenon?? 

If you don’t feel like making a big post like I did though, you should reply with some cool facts about your fursona or count how many you’ve made in the past xD That would be rad <3

If there’s some magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone else.

Entry: 009

// Cinema // 

Title: Before Trilogy (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset & Before Midnight)

Director: Richard Linklater

Screenwriters: Richard Linklater

Kim Krizan (Before Sunrise)

Ethan Hawke (Before Sunset & Before Midnight)

Julie Delpy (Before Sunset & Before Midnight)

Year/s: 1995, 2004 & 2013

-----

The first time I saw “Before Sunrise” was when I was still a kid and five minutes into the movie I thought “Wow, this is so boring, do they just talk all throughout?” which prompted me to stop watching it and forget about it. Now that I’m beyond my teenage years, I have decided to give this movie another try, but only because it was on Netflix and the constant popping up of its film screenshots on Tumblr pressured me to do it.

Nevertheless, it did not disappoint me to rediscover this cinematic gem and the two movies that followed. The Before Trilogy is set nearly a decade apart from one another and are sewed together by the conversations of the protagonists: Celine and Jesse. One of the salient points of this series is the very idea that put me off back then – it was a movie of conversations. It revolved around the thoughts of two people and it is what propels the movie to keep on rolling. I specifically admire how the director was able to pull this off without making a movie that looks pretentious, something like Socrates and Plato talking in the agora. But on the other hand, it was so natural, so fluid, so effortless, so raw and deprived of artifice that made me fall in love. It was just about two people connecting and feeling each other, the rest is just background. (Even so, the backgrounds were also picturesque on their own, you could pause at any point in the film and voila – a tumblr worthy post.)

Julie Delpy, the girl who plays Celine, said that the third eye of this movie was “emotion.” As much as I admired the streets of Vienna, the architecture in Paris or the waters of Greece, something that speaks so much louder is the emotional aspect of the characters. I also love how the running time of each film sort of reflects the phase in their life. The second film was the shortest, because it was the most unexpected and tense out of all the three. The final film was the longest, because it was the revelation of their lives after years of being together, hence, there was no pressure, there was only more story to tell.

BEFORE SUNRISE

“It’s not so bad if tonight is our only night. Maybe it makes it really special.”

This is where my age spectrum is right now, hence, this is my favorite among the three (as of now). This was the most dreamlike of them all, this was the start of the magic. Meeting a good-looking stranger on the train, walking around the streets of an old city, visiting a cathedral and rummaging through  a forgotten cemetery whilst having the most wholesome and intellectual conversation with another human being? Where do I pay to experience this fantasy? 

I liked when they talked about how we are never meant to be with our ideal love since it ruins the fantasy, that maybe it is better off to say “nice not knowing you.” This movie is like a time capsule that by and by you come back to relive that one special night with the one person who makes you sing “it would've been fun, if you would've been the one.” What made it an extraordinary experience is the fact that it was never meant to last. They must fight the ticking of the clock as they try to make the best out of this one night before sunrise. The movie finishes with an ambiguous ending, making a promise to see each other again but with no other way of contacting one another while they wait for their planned lovers’ tryst.

“I feel this pressure to be a strong and independent icon of womanhood and not have it look like my life is only revolving around some guy, but the love of a man and returning that love means a lot to me. I always make fun of it and stuff, but isn’t everything we’re doing in life a way to be loved a little more or something?”

BEFORE SUNSET

“You were for me that night Everything I always dreamt of in life But now you're gone You are far gone.”

The frustration I had for the two characters made me have an angina while watching this film. I was glad to see them intertwined again but this time, they were slammed with the reality that they have both moved on with their lives after their thwarted lovers’ tryst. Jesse has married and has a kid while Celine has her own career and a boyfriend. The echo of how things could have been if only Celine showed up during their rendezvous loomed their conversations, but their chemistry was still strong and evident. A certain sense of regret is felt as they try to stretch out this special meeting and tried to stall time as much as they could…almost as if they were still trying to hold on. This film was shorter than the other two and it matches the idea that this was the most overwrought meeting they have ever had since Jesse has to leave before sunset. The movie’s ending is still ambiguous, but a pint of hope is seen.

“The true work of improving things is in the little achievements of the day, and that's what you need to enjoy. Happiness is in doing, not in getting what you want.”

BEFORE MIDNIGHT

“I am giving you my whole life. I got nothing larger to give, I'm not giving it to anybody else.”

This final film was the most emotionally-charged of them all because the fantasy that the previous two films had set up starts to crumble. No more just one night only and no more missed chances – this was it, a life they had built together and the reality of being with someone you love. I liked how the beginning of the movie showed Jesse’s price to pay by choosing to be with Celine, and that was losing the chance to be a consistent presence in his son’s life. I liked how Celine’s pent up resentments in her life as a woman and as a mother was able to splash out the reality that plagues the lives of most women – that we spend a good amount of our youthful years building careers for ourselves but once we get married and have children, we have to give up that career and be an immaculate mother, otherwise society will drag you through the mud. I like how their arguments alluded to Jesse’s unfaithfulness, or Celine’s selfishness. But I also liked how they have formulated their own remedies to these predicaments by learning to forgive and compromise.  It showed how there’s no such thing as a fairytale – that meeting a stranger on a train and being together does not always end up perfect. This final film’s ending was no longer ambiguous, we know that they will hold it out, even after sunrise, after sunset or after midnight. She’ll still be there. He’ll still be there. 

“I am sending you this young man. Yes, young - and he will be your escort. God knows, he has many problems and has struggled his whole life connecting and being present even with those he loves the most. And for that he is deeply sorry - but you are his only hope.”

-----

I’d love to re-watch this series someday because I’m certain that I will feel differently about each of them as I grow older. The first film was deeply rooted in the idea of romance, the second film was more about life choices and careers, while the third film was about building a life together despite the imperfections.

“The first film [Before Sunrise] is about what could be, the second [Before Sunset] is about what should have been. Before Midnight is about what it is.” – Ethan Hawke

Musing on nostalgia

[Content note: long, and rather soppy and emotional by my usual standards. I’m basically fine but have been having these thoughts for quite a while and was waiting for an evening when I was feeling soppily emotional enough to do them justice in writing. Not that I know how to write soppy emotions that well in the first place.]

Increasingly throughout the past few months I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of nostalgia, mainly because I feel like it’s at the crux of a lot of the vague feelings of longing I’ve been experiencing during the current chapter of my life. I suspect it’s played a major role in some world events lately as well. A major theme of the whole most recent season of South Park was nostalgia (symbolized by the ‘member berries) and how it influenced the 2016 election. I’m not sure that nostalgia deserves a position in first place among the major causes of the surprising election outcome, but the desire to “make America great again” (in spite of the fact that the America being harked back to probably wasn’t so “great” compared to the current one) definitely played a part. At the same time, in my own personal life, when looking back on the whole year 2016 I can’t help but characterize the emotion of Nostalgia as its overarching theme.

The main part of my nostalgia has been for my grad student days, which is coupled with a deep fear that those days formed the best time of my life and I will never be able to return to that level of happiness. Not that everything went ideally: at times my research was stressful or going badly; one of my closest personal relationships was toxic on a significant level; and I was unable to get into any romantic relationship whatsoever. But many aspects of my life as a grad student turned out to be pretty adequate and some to be really wonderful. I had an idyllically active day-to-day social life for a large part of it (for the only time ever, apart from one summer program I did in college), and for the most part I loved my friends. I did manage to put together a pretty decent dissertation in the end and learned a lot of cool math on the way. My work environment was lively and social. My stress levels and overall health were okay most of the time. I loved the area where I lived and got to know it and the people in it really well, and I got into fun things like community theater and doing small gigs with local musicians. Above all, I still felt young and fairly free and was able to constantly enjoy the company of other young, fairly free people, something I struggle to do now. So naturally, I find myself yearning for those times again, not only for the natural and obvious reason that I missed certain people and places I cared about after moving away, but because most of those positive things have been strikingly absent since. This was especially true throughout last year (especially the thriving social life, lively work environment, and actual success at research were concerned). I’m glad to say that a lot of things have been looking up since the start of 2017, but they still have a ways to go and I’m not too optimistic that I’ll ever be able to regain the sort of lifestyle I had.

In short, I worry that grad school was the best period of my life, although really a better attitude would be just to be grateful for having had overall good experiences and enjoy the happy memories. (I’m reminded of a joke I once heard -- from my dissertation advisor, in fact -- that went something like this: “The optimist believes that this is the best possible world. The pessimist fears that this is indeed the case.”) It’s funny because there’s an old cliche of “Enjoy high school; those are the best years of your life.” Apart from being a misguided or even cruel thing to tell a teenager, for most people I know it seems to have been utterly untrue -- most of us, myself included, feel that our high school years really weren’t great. College is probably a better time for a lot of people, and it was certainly fresher and more exciting and liberating for me, but it also came with a great deal of personal stress and angst and much difficulty with the transition into adulthood. I was very optimistic about grad school being better, and for the most part my hopes turned out to be fulfilled. But as I neared the end of that chapter, a feeling gradually crept over me that circumstances had peaked, and so far my postdoctoral life has confirmed that suspicion. I’m afraid I will always look back and say to my past grad-student self in a sage older-man voice, “Enjoy this period while you can -- these are the best years of your life.”

(Yes, I know that just above, I’m sounding an awful lot like someone whose attitude acted as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Not sure what to say about that, except that the truth is obviously a lot more complicated.)

But what has made the heavy presence of Nostalgia worse is that it hasn’t only been longing for my grad student days, but longing for the earlier two periods of my life: teenagerhood and college. And I know perfectly well that those definitely weren’t the best of times (to be fair, not particularly miserable compared to how they are for a lot of people). In fact, a lot of things were much worse for me back then than they are today or probably ever will be again, particularly when it comes to lack of freedom and independence and my struggle at basic competence at making friends. A few things were better back then, I guess, but even the flashes of memories that dart into my mind of being a high schooler or my transition into adulthood don’t always exemplify them all that well. And yet they come with a similar deep longing to the emotion that comes with memories of more recent and happier times, and I have to wonder why.

I think at least part of the answer comes in examining the nature of nostalgia itself as it’s often experienced. I’ve wound up coming to the conclusion that when people feel nostalgic, either for earlier times in their lives or for earlier times in history that they may not even have experienced, there is a sort of selective bias in favor of the positive aspects of past situations, however few or murky they may be. I’m not sure exactly why this is, but it probably has something to do with our subconscious defense mechanisms against reliving negative things. I remember Scott writing about this in an SSC post that I don’t feel like looking up right now, where he came to a similar conclusion (in fact, he even used the example of having sentimental memories of high school as an adult despite having hated it at the time).

I’m not sure that explains the full depths of the feelings I get when revisiting pre-grad-school times because, as I said, the memories that spontaneously come to me often don’t really involve concrete circumstances that I miss today -- or at least, not at first glance. But eventually I think I’ve put my finger on something less concrete but no less tangible that I do miss from those times. I miss the constant presence, no matter how satisfied or frustrated I was with my circumstances in those times, of the potential for everything to get better, for the best times of my life to be ahead of me. In high school, I knew better than to actually believe that cliche of those years being the best, and even in college I had the sense to realize that despite a lot of conventional wisdom I still hadn’t passed or even reached my prime. Nowadays I can’t shake off a very palpable feeling -- supported not only by most conventional wisdom but the full force of my common sense and just the overall way I feel internally -- that I’ve grown older inside in a natural way that can’t really be reversed and that my peers have grown older as well but are on average much more “settled down” than I am, and that at least a lot of things are going downhill from here. I now actually have the most freedom I (or anyone) can ever really expect to have, and in regard to whatever I find unsatisfactory I can’t just tell myself that it’ll magically get better once I get older and gain more autonomy. Instead of being able to expect more doors to open for me, I only see plain evidence that a lot of doors have closed. To put it briefly and of course way too simplistically, I’ve gone “over the hill”.

I don’t remember when in the past few months this finally completely occurred to me, but I do think it hit me particularly hard at some point in January when I went through a jag of binge-watching a season of That 70′s Show on Netflix. I hadn’t been at all interested in that show before and haven’t been since, but there was a particular weekend when I was feeling physically and mentally unwell and wanted something light and not energy-demanding to leave on all the time. (Potential viewers should be warned that this show is as campy as heck, largely devoid of substance, and even kind of unintentionally racist. In its defense, it doesn’t take itself very seriously.) I was really shocked at how hard the sheer force of Nostalgia would hit me while I was watching (ironic, because the main premise is of course nostalgia for the 1970′s, before I was born). It seemed very strange, because my high school experience was absolutely nothing remotely like that of the characters. I had far less independence (couldn’t drive, for instance), lacked the kind of everyday social life involving a group that would regularly meet in someone’s basement, and was mostly wrapped up in schoolwork, practicing musical instruments, and personal hobbies as opposed to the singular goals of these characters towards beer, sex, and generally engaging in reckless shenanigans. It’s not like I had much reason to relate to these people. And yet I did strongly relate to something there, which was the completely palpable youthful optimism and carefreeness exhibited by them (and conveyed well by the actors). I know that I had that at one time, including during high school itself. For the most part I didn’t actually get to enjoy the experiences they had (and I had far more motivation for school and none for alcohol and shenanigans). But I got to enjoy the feeling that a more youthful, carefree actuality was on its way, and in fact I believe this is a big part of what kept me from ever becoming truly depressed. Back then, I just knew that it was all still ahead of me. Nowadays, although the more rational part of my mind knows that there are still some reasons to be optimistic about certain things improving, I just don’t have that same emotional resource to draw from, and I really wish I could get it back.