Hello!

Today marks 10 years since I made my first actual fursona, Arin Michaelis the Border Collie. If any of you were around for that, you may have noticed his birthday (March 27) was different from mine, and that day is today! Or, well yesterday because I posted this on midnight. Sorry, I was at work!
Here are a bunch of random, not very cohesive thoughts about that.

Now, I was a closeted furry for years before this. I was obsessed with werewolves and transformation from the age of 5 after seeing the transformation scene in An American Werewolf in London and probably also borderline therian for a long time, but Arin was the first actual fursona I made that was more than just a fan character.

He was created because I wanted to indulge in my Transformation (TF) thoughts at the time and I basically just plopped him in a world sort of like Flexible Survival but with way less sex (I was too afraid to do the sex part). I was afraid to do a lot to be honest. I limited myself when making him; natural colors only, nothing special aside form heterochromia (and even that worried me, hoping nobody thought it was cringe). He's literally just a dog.

I was also too afraid to mention his origins to my best friend who I didn't think was a furry, so I made up a completely bogus story on how I thought him up, he was cool with it, and even made a character of his own to put in the story I was thinking up about a post-apocalyptic TF world. That one was Dante Dreamfall c:
Fun fact, I still hang out with my friend to this day; he's the one who's stuck around the longest! And his character is now a Godly Dwarf named Mohimby. I don't think the art I comm'd of Mohimby as a gift was ever uploaded anywhere....

Anyway, I was Arin for a good 7 or so years! He was the first character I ever got commissioned art of, and it was such an amazing feeling to see someone draw my own character~ It did lead me to stop drawing myself though since it was easier to pay people to draw better than me X3
With him, I learned that I loved world building and making story ideas, but I hated writing a cohesive narrative with chapters.
I was able to experience for the first time online interactions with other furries who commented on my drawings. I was friends with some of them for a long time! But, I'm terrible at keeping up with people and have since drifted off from all of them as time went on.

I was able to explore my sexuality, new kinks and fetishes, as well as finally indulge in the ones I already had. Transformation has always been a core pillar of my furry identity, so I got a lot of weredog art uwu
There was a lot of lingering mental trauma relating to sexual stuff from when I was younger, so Arin helped me push past most of that over the years. I'm way more comfortable with myself now (not perfectly so, but better than before).

I was even able to bring him into VRChat back in 2020. Someone I met DAY ONE literally made a re-texture for me on my second day. I eventually made my own retexture using Spaghet's Leggy. I had that border collie model for a good couple of years, but around 2022 I slowly started using the wickerbeast i had wanted to test out more and more until the "testing out" became kind of permanent.

I had gone through quite a lot from 2020 to 2023 (the last journal from two years ago was a part of that). Just about everything about me when using Arin had kind of changed a little or faded away. I didn't quite relate to him anymore, and many of the people who had known me for that duration had changed themselves or parted ways. Asher, on the other hand, was purely just, well, me. I've poured basically everything I like into that wicker with much less holding back compared to Arin. I developed him entirely in VRChat where the whole point of the game is to be what you want to be and hang out with people. I even started making my own art again using the models I had on hand, and having a creative outlet is very liberating (and way cheaper lmao).

But, despite that, I don't dislike Arin or anything. That fursona carried me though late high school and past college. He may not be me anymore, but was was me and that's still important to remember.

Anyway, thank you for coming to my TED Talk. If anybody does happen to read this and has any questions, feel free to ask! It would be fun to talk about it uwu