Well, as my first ever journal here, I wanna take a dip into something going on in my head.

Maybe first a short intro!

I go by many names but I answer to Peri, Perior, Russet, Dolly, Dollyboy, Fluff.. They do say that a beloved child has many names so I guess that's true lol. I'm someone who only quite recently came to grips with my identity and all that, despite being well into my adulthood. Not that that's a bad thing, self discovery can happen any time in life. Or afterlife as far as I'm concerned. That's actually something I want to write about, so let's jump in!

For the majority of my life, here where I live and well, everywhere else, being a furry was something to be laughed at. Despite this, cartoons of animal protagonists like Biker Mice From Mars, Rescue Service, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the like, were the majority. So when the generation before me who's children grew up watching these cartoons and saw parts of themselves reflected there and thus began to identify more with the animalistic or fantasy elements in those characters realised, that their children had become what we now know and call furries, they did everything to undo it. Well in my country that method was shame as in many others. If you at let's say.. 8th grade still liked anything that wasn't a human, elf or dwarf, you were made fun of relentlessly. By kids and adults.

So in those days being called a furry was very much an insult, a thing to be ashamed of. Those who were bullied and shamed learned to mask and hide. Times did change a little when werewolves became the mainstream media fad, and being a furry became more accepted but within very limited parameters. It's also around this time that the horror stories we have all heard about furries began to run the rounds in my country. I was maybe 12-13 at the time.

As for myself, I early on liked the idea of furries but thanks to relentless bullying had to hide it and mask it. So I hid it, and made sure it wouldn't surface again. Well as you can guess, with the current time, I failed at that part lol. Well, time went on for me as for everyone else, and I found a small breathing hole in writing. I've been doing daily creative writing, storyboarding and all such things for maybe 15 years now, and I found myself able to let my inner furry breathe a little through those writings. Almost ten years ago I found my best friend, with whom I've been writing this long ongoing saga as roleplay starting like a week or two after we met until today.

The multiple characters we wrote and created span races, fandoms, realities, technologies, genders and orientations. We came up with a race of essentially furries based on Nordic folklore creatures called huldra mixed with the Näkken. Huldra are in the folklore giants or trolls, who have their backs hollowed out for animals to nest and live in. It's also where they draw unsuspecting humans to die, especially if they were a danger to nature. Näkken are water spirits of mischief, who lure unsuspecting humans into the water to drown them by disguising themselves as whatever the person most desires or fancies. Most common were naked humans and a beautiful horse. So we combined these two folklore creatures into our version of the Huldra. They are what furries are, all shapes and sizes with their own unique features and skills. We have wolves in our world with birds, foxes cats mice unicorns dragonlike creatures lizards merfolk.. you name it the huldra are that in our world we created on paper. Naturally we had all the usual fantastical creatures like dragons phoenixes normal unicorns satyrs and such there too.

This ongoing roleplay gave me more room to breathe and think about myself, who and what I was. I slowly became able to finally admit to myself that yes, I am a furry. And that's okay, I'm still me. Meanwhile, outside the breathing room I was finally given, I explored by orientation. I was already training to become a Dom, which I now am. I realised early on I do enjoy other's pain in that way so I admitted to myself that I'm a sadist. Not cruel as such but I do get my kicks. While training I realised that limiting myself to just the opposite sex wasn't for me. And I was becoming more aware of the spectrum of identities also, so widening my field so to speak wasn't something weird to me anymore. I explored being bi for a while, but have now ended up as pan. I also decided that monogamy was definitely not for me, as I wanted to love many people and be loved by many people, so polygamy it was.

And the last revelation and coming to grips with moment I had was maybe a month ago or so. Until then I had always been AFAB, I was brought up one, most of my friends were female, there was no such talk of being other gendered or trans back in my days of growing up. I knew I wasn't trans though, as I didn't fully identify as male either. I knew I wasn't nonbinary despite the pronouns I now use (they/them/it) I had come across the genderfluid idea before but never considered it earlier. But I came to give it some serious thought. How I identified myself had always been freely flowing from one gender to the next to the next to the next, never really settling. Sure many people experience something similar but for me the flow was ever going. Not only day to day but sometimes hour to hour.. It has since then calmed down somewhat but the flow is still there. After reading other's experiences I felt a kind of kinship there. So here I am, a genderfluid polyamorous pansexual furry.

As to how Russet came about.. Thank Dungeons and Dragons for it. I instantly fell in love with the pseudodragons and the fey. Russet became my default name when I was making characters, and something I found myself more and more drawn to. Then I met some friends, some kobold friends and dragon friends and all kinds of friends, and tadaah! Russet the pseudodragon ended up my sona. I can prattle on more about Russet another time, this was just a short explanation lol.

Now that I'm here and have met many many more of my brethren of furrydom, I feel more at ease, relaxed and accepted than ever before. I feel much more comfortable in my skin, my weight, my identity and yes, my particular interests and peculiarities lol. So I'm glad I found my fellows and friends, and became free.

But that's my coming to grips -story. Definitely didn't make sense or sound cohesive, I never make an outline for anything I write, not even back in school. But here it is, I got it out and it's in one piece. Hopefully I'll see you at my next rambling, whenever that might be, whatever it might be about! Love your faces~