So a bit ago I discussed how I came by the “Arrow” name, and how I feel it defines me more. But a name is…well, just a word without an association. When you think your best friend’s name, you see their face, or perhaps a memory of them. And for most people, that’s fine.
But in life, things can chance. People can have appearance features they don’t like. Your hair, your weight, your physique. And some things can’t even be changed. When I was young I asked my mom about advertising for Rogaine, which had just been released as a hair-loss treatment, and at my limited age, self-image and the reason someone wouldn’t want to go bald didn’t make sense. She told me I’d understand when I was older.
One of the best things about being online, and furry in general, is being able to sand away those edges and present a more ideal version of how you view yourself. How, in furry, your fursona looks. What you see staring back from the mirror. (I consider a “fursona” to be an idealized self-image. Once you start changing skills, backstory, history…now that’s an “Original Character”.)
When I first delurked online, I spent a lot of time thinking about what species to choose. But various birds were well represented, and eventually I picked a red-tailed hawk. Now I won’t argue there were influences, but also, red-tailed hawks are considered more ‘mellow’ as a general rule (at least until pissed off!), and to be ones that are adaptable. And if these aren’t traits I have, they’re ones I desire. Eagles felt too much…bully, to me. Never been a huge falcon guy, and accipiters are very high strung.
So I started as a red-tailed hawk as my fursona. At that time, it was largely just the animal, except with human level intelligence and speech. At the time, I had a lot of stressors on my life and the escapism idea of just being able to fly away and not worry about them was appealing. Of course, over a few years, some new realities set in. In particular, any predator is really never more than a week and some bad luck from starving. And that really impinges on the freedom; we romanticize animal life a lot, but it’s not as great as we sometimes think.
So eventually I started using an anthropomorphic hawk form. Hands are useful! And I also got more reality based. I kept the wingarm configuration, as I was a bit of a stickler for biological accuracy, and back wings do not have the musculoskeletal support that would be necessary to fly. (Though I also did shapeshifting for a while, having dozens of different IRC nicks, as I figured out finer details). A few years later, I added a blue arrowhead marking over the right pectoral, and then started getting drawn with a satchel, because pockets are useful as well. (At some point around here, I added an alternate Luminari form with Lunarkeys’ permission, because a new exploration of dolphin form. That’s stayed for a long time.)
I started adding back some clothes, mostly pants, along the way. But morphologically, Arrow was pretty similar up until the early 2020s. By that time, the slate-grey color had grown on me, and I decided to try it out on a new form with backwings. Having bedsheets drape off your arm can’t be easy! So I moved to the six-limb configuration I’d skipped in the past. And…that honestly fit better. It’s stayed mostly the same since…with one unknown.
I kept my height in the past the same, and was self-conscious about changing it to be smaller, even though I’ve got a lot of short bird characters. But…I’ve decided to try it. It feels right. And I can always change again if needed. But I think we’re gonna be stable for a bit from here.
This gets even more fun with characters with wider shapeshifting abilities…but that’s a topic for another day.