on spirit foxes

this is a weird one for me to talk about publicly. when i say 'spirit fox', it's because i genuinely do feel a connection to the folkloric and mythic portrayal of foxes across all of eurasia, including right here in scotland. but it's also because to admit that this identity centers on the japanese kitsune specifically is to open a whole can of worms.

in the aughts, the kitsune community was so prolific, so loud, that it broke containment. multiple orthohuman writers on kitsune complained about encounters with them. and they were right to, because a lot of people with this identity were really weird and orientalist about it. there's a reason that kitsune was the go-to example in debates about cultural appropriation in otherkin spaces at one point. this is the unfortunate cultural legacy i am inheriting by choosing to use that word. i still have a lot of thinking to do about that, and about how i want to express my experience in a way that doesn't repeat the weeby sins of my forebears.

another thing that complicates the matter is that i don't think this identity is inherent to me. i am, in fact, pretty sure that it was given to me by Set, or O-Inari-sama, or both in collusion. i think it's a lesson. i am not entirely sure what the lesson is, but the insights i do have currently belong in the realm of private shadow-work stuff. that's heka.

around the time i started probing into this, roughly march of 2023, i had one of the most severe manic episodes i've ever had. in about four days, working on little to no sleep, i taught myself the entire process of designing, modelling, texturing and rigging avatars for VR applications. since it was on my mind, i made a kitsune. is there a greater meaning to this fit of madness and inspiration? i dunno. i did end up keeping the character around - i guess they're a fursona, in the sense that most people mean it, as a sort of mascot. they're not core to my alterhuman identity in any way, i just think they're neat.

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