I guess it depend.

I'll speak for me, but my lynx is nearly like me. Beside all the word he have a'd backstory he is like me, kinda.
I'm just stick with this one sona, even I know many have more than 3 haha

For myself, I just thought about my favorite themes and character-types and designed them into a character.

Sci-fi, cyberpunk, samurai, bounty hunters, sharks, fluffy dragons, etc.

You designed a characte and that character acts on your behalf (from a brief look in your gallery, that cahracter even has intimate moments with your friends), yet that character is not you. You are not the sci-fi samurai that it is. What do you feel about that gap between that Carbon of online and the Carbon of sci-fi lande?

Carbon online is a safe way to represent myself online anonymously without having to disclose any personal information about myself, and allows me to express myself freely to others online with an alias that protects me from being "doxed" so to speak.

Carbon in sci-fi land is able to express much more of my ideas for action-adventure, and lets me play on themes I really enjoy seeing with ideas of my own. It enables me to embrace that fun cyberpunk samurai vibe in me I wish I could otherwise. (Despite the fact cyberpunk landscapes are TERRIBLE places to live. Lmao)

In all, it's two ways of self-expression that both touch on myself and my interests while allowing a divide between my character's personal universe and my own personal social life. c: My character acts as a way to bridge both the gap of social distance, and the gap of science-fiction.

Hmm, haven't really thought much about that. But for me he is more or less just a character and I guess the themes of the character represents some of my interests in fiction and such if that makes any sense.

I don't think I have much relevant input to give there, but it reminds me of a talk by Stigmata more or less on this topic. Maybe that can be interesting to you if you haven't seen it already! https://youtu.be/wDRNE0-9dXA?t=645

Am familiar (have even seen in person), it’s a good one!

Would recommend for anyone stumbling upon this comment to watch!

Well, I'm not a shapeshifting kitsune in real life

For me specifically, it's a 'what would I be if I were in that world' situation. So both are very much 'me' in every sense of the word, just with different upbringings and histories that brought us to our current points.

It is something... My sona is a mix of me, stuff that I like, and things that I would like to be. As a character he lives in a world ruled by magic. He is also monster looking.

Out of his background and character. I tried to make him to resemble to me as much as possible (just taking off the thinks that make him look like a monster, and he is me). The personality it is mostly like me.

I think that the big difference is when I write down his story, he can play knowing the game and rules of that world... Using the magic stuff that I gave him.

So, yeah! It is weird, but he is not me, but I am him, and he is me. I think of it as a a nice spider-verse thing xd

My take on it is that the fursona is supposed to be me, apart from appearance so there's not gonna be any actual worldbuilding etc., though I suppose there can be some dreamy art etc.
But for the actual worldbuilding aspect, there's the other cat, who on first glance looks quite the similar, except with boobies and she is supposed to get into all sort sof situations that I never can or even would (want to) lol

Vinny is mostly an extension of me, reflecting my ideal self. Kinda boring, but helps me in a way of reminding me of my goals in a way. He's also a fun way into poking into the past as he's big on Scandinavian history and mythology. Something I'd like to study more irl

EDIT, addendum: I do have a lot more "characters" in mind that I'd love to build upon.

Main Sona I draw, is in effect, me: species and gender swapped. The world she lives in is mostly interchangeable with the regular world. Tastes etc etc follow along. Mind you, reality skipping doorways do not exsist here, outside of Indiginous lore and tales.

I hope these replies don't have a character limit. This may be a bit of a story.

If you could call him a sona, he began as a character for an adventure RP. I wrote him, I named him, I drew him. For a follow-up game, I had to flesh out his world for the group would play in.

After that, he stuck with me. Perhaps it was investment in that bit of work I'd done, perhaps it was fondness of familiarity in an otherwise isolated life, perhaps he was an amalgamation of themes I'd lived and was still living through - some I understood, some I was still figuring out.

I can't say I'm him. Can't say I've ever been. But I'll readily say he lives in my head. And less-readily, that I've lived a fair bit in his. He's not my only character who has pieces of me, but he has the most, and he's left many of his in me.

I write him. He is central to my largest endeavor. Funny, it was originally meant to be his story as told by him, but a side character came along and hijacked the plot, and now she's the protagonist and he's playing second fiddle. And the story's much better for it. Hell, it's more fun to write him without being in his head all the time.

Writing him has changed him, some. And me - I'd be fool to deny that. It's a bit strange: he is locked in those moments on the page, yet still grows as a being with every return of the pen.

Another strangeness: he may not be mine forever. Finishing this work, putting it out there - if I succeed, I'll be committing him to the public consciousness. I've lived half my life with him. I can't know what will happen to him. Will there be two, then? Which would be the most real? I don't know. I can't know.

But I hope thinking about this may make it easier to move forward.

There's versions of him already. Him-in-the-book. Him-in-my-head. Him-in-roleplay. There's overlaps aplenty, but each comes out in a different time and place for different purpose.

I don't know what to call me anymore. Same as he, different flavors of I come out in different times and places for different purposes. There are common themes, values, passions, methods of interest and thought. But none of them add up to a person. I'm only a full, functional thing when I'm wearing at least one of those masks. And he's several of them.

Maybe that's just the way we are, as creatures who can conceptualize not just what is, but what isn't. Maybe we're straining at the limits of reality, sticking eyes and fingers and toes into every blind crack we can. I don't think that's a bad thing. It might maybe be the best thing about being.

Or maybe I'm just another writer going mad.

My two male characters are just one side of me exaggerated. For example, Sparky is a happy go lucky, the world can't get me down, goofball who won't take things seriously. Anyone who works with me knows I'm a rather serious person about procedure... Kris on the other hand is a grump, who's prone to high levels of cynicism, while I'm not that bad and usually mellow out after work. They're both a way for me to explore and look introspectively at myself most of the time while still passing as a version of 'me.'

I do try to just keep basically a canon and non-canon version. I do also have the advantage of the canon one being set in a time period that isn't just modern times. So it's a bit easier to differentiate that way i guess, but then again also don't really specify the difference anywhere so it's all blurry anyway.

But yeah, basically just 2 versions of the same character.

I used to use my fursona like this. The breaks from myself represented my internal life, that is, my imagination. Most of my art is emotionally-charged, so surreal things are symbolic of said emotions. My fursona had lore, but the lore changed frequently, maybe a few times a year, as my daydreams were not consistent. It was easy for me to still consider that character as me, since I was pretty socially isolated in my teen and early adult years, and didn't have much of an "external life" to depict anyway! Plus, I felt like I was depicting "emotional truth" with my metaphors even if not literal truth.

Since this year, I've been more interested in a down-to-earth and optimistic fursona, mostly just "me but bird," no longer with its own lore, but still can be inserted into my headworld or unrealistic situations for fun. After all, my non-sona OCs are bits and pieces of myself, and I can use them to explore heavy or supernatural themes without directly representing myself or creating pessimistic self-fulfilling prophecies, as well as have (consistent) backstories for them.

The dragon character Rhos who is my online namesake and avatar served as a "sona" really only for a short period of time when I first re-entered the fandom as an artist in 2014ish. While I still love the character and her aesthetic, she originated from a collection of short stories and imaginings that an ex and I created together, so when that relationship went out so too did my strong connection with her history and original world.

I never felt suuuuper into that dragon being a pure and honest representation of "me" as a person. She became an avatar and furry public face for my art only after she was first and foremost that storybook character who had a fun dynamic with her rider counterpart which went on to become my ex's "sona" character. We originally planned on making a whole comic or series about them at some time, but when we entered the furry fandom with them as our public "faces" things changed. People started treating me and the character interchangeably as if the dragon were me, which always felt a little weird and off, albeit amusing sometimes. It changed the dynamic of the character that I wasn't really into while my ex ran with it, and the stories came to a halt. It all started to feel strange and ill fitting.

While those old stories still exist in a dusty corner somewhere, I imagine she has since ripped off her leather saddle, her adventures with the rider being over, and flew off to be a wild mountain dragon again somewhere amongst misty, pine covered foothills where magic and myth abound. Nowadays Rhos is in part a mascot for my art, but also a symbol that I use in my personal art for growth and exploration. She is a sort of conduit for me to explore different parts of myself, my connection to fantasy, folklore, art, nature, and also processing different emotions like anger which I used to bottle, push down, or struggle with expressing.

She is sort of a true north and imaginary companion in the landscape of my mind who helps keep the fires lit, and guards the door like a bulwark between me and the online world as I explore my craft and face the challenges that come with doing art for a living. I have a couple of more directly sona-like characters who have taken the place of a more "me" representation in art that I play with who are another story and who play different roles for me as well.

Anyway, thanks for the question! I didn’t plan to write a wall of text at ya but it's cool to have these thoughts written down somewhere. I'd love to hear how you answer the question for yourself, if you can.

I don't feel any particular attachment to any of my characters, don't really feel like I've got any I could call a fursona. They're all art fodder and exist so that I can get art commissioned.

I guess on a meta level, that still makes them reflections of myself 🤔 It's all gone full circle. Perhaps just using them as a vehicle for the creation of art without worrying about any relation of them to myself is the purest expression of myself 🤔🤔🤔

I have 3 characters I use I dub "Fursonas".
Two are Shoon and Laura, which I consider different bunches of aspects of my personality and sense of self split from my complete idea of Me and rounded into entire characters. Then given a world and lore and story. If combined in a static (not story-influenced) state, it would be a very close approximation of me.

I have a third character which is just me. They have no name or nickname. I use them almost exclusively in doddles in order to express myself. They are more of an idea. They are a: This is what I may have looked like had I been not a human but some anthropomorphic animal hybrid descendent of what I think my parents and their grandparents may have been, with consideration of how their looks affected my IRL body. With some minor additions and adjustments based on my aesthetic preferences.

For online representation, I primarily use Shoon as I believe he is a closer approximation of my social behaviour and appearance. Though the third character would have theoretically been able to represent me better aesthetically, I do not feel comfortable with almost anybody other than me capturing their likeness.


Very interesting question!! Definitely prompted some deep thinking.

I have a distinction between OCs and fursonas, in that fursonas are OCs that I identify with.

I have two fursonas, and they represent different aspects of my personality.

My OCs usually have more worldbuilding behind them, and like you suggested, are indeed more promiscuous than me in a sense. The fact that they're not >me but furry<, or an aspect of my personality makes more more okay with others making surprise lewd art of them without asking, or saying things that they'd like to do to them. This gives me a kind of buffer, a zone of comfort, because they aren't things said about me, just about my creation. However, I probably wouldn't me this comfortable about things done to my fursona, so I never encouraged people to draw or write such things about either of my fursonas.

I /want/ to first create a system, a world where to place my boy, but then i find that he's a bit too fancy to actually fit what I had in mind so he is basically a free spirit with only basic BG

depends on the situation!

usually I use my fursona as a drawn representation of myself, usually for silly doodles of irl happenings. other times they do kinda exist as a character, an imagining of myself in another universe with lore that's pretty similar to mine but different so I have room to explore!