fox and bunny 5
may 31, 2026
when i first invented these characters, around the time i was 16, fox was always supposed to be something like my id (not intentionally drawing directly from Freudian philosophy at the time, that's just how i choose to frame it now), and bunny was supposed to embody my superego, the part of me that "knows better." my base, animal self, the thing which harbored desires and struggled to understand People was a different entity from the mask worn and projected as the respectable persona. fox was dumb, the way animals are, but he was happy and indulged in simple joys. bunny was a little bit of a blowhard, and self-critical. she thought highly of herself and the idea of intelligence. in reality, my self-perception as "intelligent" was the only thing propping up my paper-thin self esteem. being a fat girl -- but not just any fat girl, the fattest girl anyone who met me would likely ever meet -- had eroded any sense of worth i was capable of feeling, and so all of my energy went into proving that i was valuable because of my mind.
that worked for a little while. something has to, when you're a child. you have to have something that keeps you from falling fully into the hole of, "there really is nothing about me that is worth anything to anyone." but i was hanging on by the tips of my fingers over the cliff's edge of the abyss. to call it tenuous is an understatement.
but, eventually, you grow up. you get better at thinking. you notice more things you didn't before, and you put together puzzle pieces that you'd have been better off not putting together. at some point, it dawned on me that i was happier when i was actually stupid. and the thing is, back when my ego was scotch-taped together with self-soothing affirmations such as, "at least i'm smarter than the people who hurt me, and that makes me better than them," i knew it wasn't true. the signs were everywhere, i just chose to ignore them. i guess i had to.
it took a really, really long time to figure out all the ways i thought about things differently, and why it caused me problems. it took so long to understand people. it took years upon years of studying how people think and behave and watching them carefully to understand how things work. i learned early that everyone gets very angry at you if you don't, no matter how good your intentions are, no matter how much you just wanted to feel involved. "lurk more" was something i internalized after watching other annoying (autistic) children get ripped apart publicly, and deciding i never wanted that to be me.
fox is who i was before i knew anything. he means well, but he's stupid. bunny knows this. she loves him, but she knows. she's the one who stops and looks both ways before crossing the road. and sometimes she waits at the side of the road, watching, and never crosses. she watches others make their attempts and in her heart, she knows that she'll have to one day. but she's scared, and keeps saying, "it's fine to wait and watch and learn about it for just a little longer. it's still not safe."
but there's no one here who can nudge her to take a step across the road.
an aside: a funny fact about me is that i had a special interest in grammar when i was around 13. i saw the power of words and language, and how they helped me to understand other people, the gulf of understanding between us being what it was, and thought, "this is my doorway to normalcy. this is the key that unlocks People."
there was some truth to that, and i guess i've always valued words for those reasons. getting definitions right isn't important because you're dumb if you don't. it's important because we have to mutually agree on definitions in order for words to be effective. when i started finding out that this isn't always the case, it was a huge source of stress for me. it still bothers me now. this is only kind of tangentially related. i only wanted to mention it.