In my case, every single one of them started as purely a roleplaying character.
My first furry character, Sonnette Felstrom, was a Sonic the Hedgehog fan character with perhaps the most unoriginal background ever, being basically a genderswapped version of Sonic (yes, this means she's a hedgehog). There's more to it than that, but I won't bore you with the details. Because she was my main character for a long time, her name became associated with me, and so it's the name that I used everywhere. But she has never truly been my fursona; I have never associated her with my RL self.
Then there's her hybrid hedgehog/fox/dragon son Miles Felstrom, whose alter-ego is the armored battlemage The Gray Fox. Miles has also never been particularly associated with my RL self, but I've used his name as my own in two places. First, during my stint as a disc jockey for my college radio station, I called myself "DJ GrayFox." This also served as my badge name at Project: A-Kon (the main Dallas anime convention) up until 2007. I had created a new AIM account specifically for the radio show, "gothgrayfox" (our show's format was primarily gothic/industrial/darkwave/80's retro), and over time that slowly became my primary AIM account, most of my older ones now being defunct. The second place I used the name is when participating in the Society for Creative Anachronism with my wife. My SCA name (not registered, but then I'm not active enough in the SCA to care) is Miles GrayFox, which is also nice as an homage to the late Baron William Blackfox, an SCA enthusiast and furry artist/comic writer whose "Vixen's Keep" was my introduction to the SCA.
Another of Sonnette's children, and the first of my true fursonas, is Sarah Felstrom (initially a hedgehog/cat/hyena female [with the hyena being mostly recessive from her father's side], she was later merged with a male dragon to become a halfdragon hermaphrodite). Sarah is the first character that I considered to be "ideal me," what I wish I could be in a perfect world. There's another variant of hir without the connections to Sonnette and having been born a herm halfdragon that is even closer to me, both psychologically and in terms of family history; this version even shares my RL middle initial and last name. But I've never personally identified as Sarah outside of a small group of very close friends... part of the reason being I didn't want to be known by something that is an obviously female name in common use, since that would cause some awkward questions, particularly in the places where furrydom intersected non-furry life, like at anime cons.
Which brings us to Chakat Silverstreak.
As I said in my comment on the S.A.S. thread, Silverstreak started out as just another RP character, my line of reasoning being, "I like herms, I like taurs, I've been reading all these awesome stories on the Chakat's Den... I think I'd like to have a Chakat character!" As time went on, though, I began to realize that I was imbuing Silverstreak with more and more of myself... and I was identifying more and more with the Chakat racial psych profile and general world view. I think in many ways, even Sarah was a Chakat at heart and just didn't have the body to match. So in 2007, I decided: I am Silverstreak, shi is me. When I met istanbul777 for the first time, I introduced myself as Chakat Silverstreak, and that's been my identity in furrydom and even outside it, in the Greater Internet Area, since about that time. Beginning with A-Kon 2007, when I started working as an audiovisual tech for the convention, my badge has read "Chakat Silverstreak."
In many ways, even though shi wasn't my first online identity or my first furry identity, or even the first furry character that I identified as being close to myself and a piece of my heart, I think Silverstreak truly is my first and only real fursona.
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My first furry character, Sonnette Felstrom, was a Sonic the Hedgehog fan character with perhaps the most unoriginal background ever, being basically a genderswapped version of Sonic (yes, this means she's a hedgehog). There's more to it than that, but I won't bore you with the details. Because she was my main character for a long time, her name became associated with me, and so it's the name that I used everywhere. But she has never truly been my fursona; I have never associated her with my RL self.
Then there's her hybrid hedgehog/fox/dragon son Miles Felstrom, whose alter-ego is the armored battlemage The Gray Fox. Miles has also never been particularly associated with my RL self, but I've used his name as my own in two places. First, during my stint as a disc jockey for my college radio station, I called myself "DJ GrayFox." This also served as my badge name at Project: A-Kon (the main Dallas anime convention) up until 2007. I had created a new AIM account specifically for the radio show, "gothgrayfox" (our show's format was primarily gothic/industrial/darkwave/80's retro), and over time that slowly became my primary AIM account, most of my older ones now being defunct. The second place I used the name is when participating in the Society for Creative Anachronism with my wife. My SCA name (not registered, but then I'm not active enough in the SCA to care) is Miles GrayFox, which is also nice as an homage to the late Baron William Blackfox, an SCA enthusiast and furry artist/comic writer whose "Vixen's Keep" was my introduction to the SCA.
Another of Sonnette's children, and the first of my true fursonas, is Sarah Felstrom (initially a hedgehog/cat/hyena female [with the hyena being mostly recessive from her father's side], she was later merged with a male dragon to become a halfdragon hermaphrodite). Sarah is the first character that I considered to be "ideal me," what I wish I could be in a perfect world. There's another variant of hir without the connections to Sonnette and having been born a herm halfdragon that is even closer to me, both psychologically and in terms of family history; this version even shares my RL middle initial and last name. But I've never personally identified as Sarah outside of a small group of very close friends... part of the reason being I didn't want to be known by something that is an obviously female name in common use, since that would cause some awkward questions, particularly in the places where furrydom intersected non-furry life, like at anime cons.
Which brings us to Chakat Silverstreak.
As I said in my comment on the S.A.S. thread, Silverstreak started out as just another RP character, my line of reasoning being, "I like herms, I like taurs, I've been reading all these awesome stories on the Chakat's Den... I think I'd like to have a Chakat character!" As time went on, though, I began to realize that I was imbuing Silverstreak with more and more of myself... and I was identifying more and more with the Chakat racial psych profile and general world view. I think in many ways, even Sarah was a Chakat at heart and just didn't have the body to match. So in 2007, I decided: I am Silverstreak, shi is me. When I met
In many ways, even though shi wasn't my first online identity or my first furry identity, or even the first furry character that I identified as being close to myself and a piece of my heart, I think Silverstreak truly is my first and only real fursona.