I had a different post I wanted to write today but I am entirely not in the mood for it, so let’s talk about something different: self-definition.
So obviously I have a name in meatspace. And there’s plenty of people who use that for me. But for years now, I’ve felt as if “Arrow” is my real name.
Western cultures tend to assign a name at birth to an individual. Changing that is, at best, quite difficult outside of a few approved circumstances. Kids can be named all sorts of things, and most names mean SOMETHING, but at best they’re somewhat aspirational, something you might want for the kid to do. But other cultures allowed a child name, and then an adult name that the person would choose for themselves. And I think there’s something to that.
When I started going online, I needed a different name. I’ve already spilled ink on how I got into furry and TF communities so I don’t see a reason to retype all that. But since the time I took the name “Arrow”, it’s slowly come to be more ‘me’ than the name I had at birth. There are relatively few people who can call me by both my legal name *AND* my online name, but I always prefer the latter.
I think a lot of it comes down to what Arrow is. Arrow *IS* me. Beyond just the physical appearance of anthro hawk, I think he’s more personality-wise true to me. In real life, I often have to tamp down aspects of myself to operate better. I didn’t get the “Standard” social interaction drivers pre-loaded, and had to reverse-engineer the package over years with painstaking effort. Indeed, being online where text was the only medium (at least when I started!) was important in me developing better social skills as it allowed me to slowly add things to my repertoire.
But when I’m online, (or among my few remaining local friends) I’m much more free to be myself. I don’t have to mask, or filter in the same way. I can be *ME*in the best form. And in my mind, *ME* is Arrow, and my legal name is more…not a fiction, but certainly not the same mentally. It’s a suit I wear, I suppose.
Arrow as my fursona has of course changed in physical appearance over years, (and I’ll be coming back to self-image for fursonae and OCs another day) as I got older and I changed, but I do think that that name is the core of who I am these days.
(Note: While I understand the definition isn’t fully agreed on, in my mind, a ‘fursona’ is you, as your more ideal physical self. Once you start altering history, personality, upbringing, setting, skills, and any other life details, at that point it’s an Original Character, or OC. And while there absolutely can be overlap, there doesn’t have to be.)