Looking through the search results for "Ottsel" here on FurAffinity, my buddy here made mention to the fact that it looks like everyone who decided on Ottsel as a fursona did so around the age of twelve. Kinda makes me feel a little weird for choosing it, especially since it's more of a niche thing. Not that I regret the decision, I love them for their.. somewhat uniqueness and I'll stick with it. I'm somewhat new to the community and picked the creature a couple of months ago. In doing so I was naively hoping that Ottsels existed somewhere outside the Jak and Daxter universe. I'm not saying everyone who chooses ottsels as a fursona is immature and picks them only because they saw them in a videogame and just stuck with it, (even though they only technically "exist" because of the game), but that's basically what I did, just passively and much later on in life. If I realized I liked furry stuff (or knew it existed) when I was twelve, I probably would have done the same thing; I was kinda like that as a kid. Impressionable by pop culture.
It started as one night when a furry friend and I were together, shortly after deciding that I wanted the be involved with the furry community. We were going through different kinds of animals, years after I last played the videogame, when the idea for choosing Ottsel simply sprung into my head after seeing "Ocelot" that night. I didn't want to be another common animal, nor could I just settle on being one; I just had to be some sort of hybrid.