Hanalei

This might be fairly old-school but I gotta have the NERDTree in plain Vim.

If there’s only one sign that I’m actually a greymuzzle, let it be the fact that I barely kept up with Pokémon beyond Gen 1, heh. Gen 1 is the only gen as far as I’m concerned!

Lapras and Rapidash were my faves. I also rather like Cubone/Marowak.

Pokémon Red on the Game Boy was my first game! Actually I played it on the Game Boy Pocket and then the Game Boy Color. I remember getting super excited about Pokémon Snap on the N64.

Now that I think about it, maybe I liked Calvin & Hobbes because so much even when I was younger because I found it so validating. It’s a nerdy and highly relatable journey but with a TON of heart. I might have found a little bit of myself in Calvin and Hobbes themselves, too, heh.

But that’s the beautiful thing about art, isn’t it? Art is forgiving, and it rewards experimentation.

“Messy?” – sure, maybe, I dunno. But definitely assertive and deliberate, and kinda fierce! I like it

Aha, I see that now, too.

My thought exactly – why not contribute to OpenStreetMap?

Classic

I rather like my NUC. I trust that Asus will do some neat things with the concept

My fursona was never trans, but she was always a girl. She represented the ideal version of myself, who turned out to also be a girl, heh.

Her species has changed, though. Originally she was just a dog of some sort. Then at some point I decided I wasn’t afraid to break the mold a little bit, and now she’s a zebra. That species change DOES coincide with my own gender identity journey, though.

(To be clear, I’ve just retconned Hanalei into being a zebra the whole time – it is not the case that Hanalei herself was originally a dog (*) who transitioned into a zebra, haha)

(*) ADAB: Assigned Dog At Birth?

For me, there were several separate threads that all came together at one point.

In middle school, I was envious of my friends’ artistic abilities and I resolved to get better at drawing. This was during the heyday of DeviantArt and so I made an account and followed my friends. Traversing through people’s profiles and what they liked, just randomly surfing, I discovered the work of Melissa O’Brien (“Frisket17”) and I fell in love with their entire oeuvre.

Then I realized why I was so in love with her work specifically: for the first time, I saw depictions that closely resembled the world that I had built in my head – a sort of sunny, tropical spinoff of Redwall. And then I was like, oh my god, it’s not just me! I’m not the only one who wants to see this sort of thing. I wanted The Lion King but in a city. I wanted the beach episode of Redwall. I finally had a word for it: I wanted furry. And it turns out I could draw these characters, too – I could flesh out my own world AND get better at art. Win!

I didn’t realize it at the time, but the reason I had created my own world in the first place is because I desperately wanted an escape from my real life woes about gender identity and my sexuality. I learned through anthro art the relationship between the furry fan and their fursona, and I was like, “I want one, too.” I REALLY liked the idea of being a person, but WITHOUT the BS human limitations that were contributing to my gender dysphoria.

So, I guess I stumbled upon the fandom initially because I wanted to get better at art, but the reason I stuck around is because it offered a safe space for me to explore identity. That was the real awakening.

Yyyyuuppp! Hanalei has gone through several iterations, but she’s always been a girl. In retrospect, it was one of the literally millions of obvious signs that I was trans – the signs I chose to ignore because I didn’t want to think about it… yall know how it is.

This is wonderful! I get good vibes from Weaver.

Hehe FurryMUCK Access Interface Device. Seriously though that is very, very cool, gives me ideas for the cyberdeck I’ve always wanted to build. EstroNoodl looks tasty

My sister and I used to play as much as we could from Purple Moon: Secret Paths in the Forest, Rockett’s New School, and so on. And look at me, now I’m working towards getting the Rockett games supported in ScummVM, haha. So, if I had to pick one to answer the question, it’d be Rockett’s Tricky Decision which got me into adventure games.

Putt-Putt and the various Disney Animated Storybooks were lots of fun, too, I have fond memories of those. (As you can see, I grew up in the era of 1990s CD-ROM edutainment)

But the game that made me realize the true potential of what you could do was Riven. I borrowed my friend’s CD-ROM set when I was in 6th grade or something (a box of 3 or 4 discs, that’s how big the game is) and I was like, holy crap, this is better and even more immersive than Myst. Riven is how I fell in love with the whole Myst universe.

The fact that I kept sketching this one dog girl in my sketchbooks in middle school and high school was a sign that something was up. (I didn’t realize it at the time.) I wanted to her to be real so that I could talk to her and hang out with her. But then over time I realized I wanted to become her, lol.

Being a furry does not inform my gender identity whatsoever – I don’t “identify” as a furry, rather, it is a hobby and I am a big fan of it. BUT, like many people, the fandom and the sheer diversity of characters makes it the perfect place to explore identity. And I definitely did that.

I literally said “Woah” out loud when I read the part where this isn’t the first time this guy has been fined on this scale for speeding. Totaling nearly 280k euros over the past 10 years! Seems like a perfectly fair price to pay for the obscenely wealthy – we know just how exponentially much more money the richest have compared to everyone else.