*poof*

rhie is standing next to whitewood in front of a gravestone. both of them are looking down at it. whitewood says, ''i'm sorry about this. i don't know why i thought it would work.'' rhie looks unfazed. she says, ''hm. well, i was the one who dug the hole. eagerly, i'll admit. and it's not like i need to apologize to myself.'' whitewood vanishes in a puff of smoke. she continues, ''i don't need to apologize to or mourn my child self because i'm right here. i never left. i grew up. it's not someone else. it's just me.'' rhie is me now, an adult man. but still a fox. he says, ''i am who i am, and there's no changing that. god knows i've tried. being ashamed doesn't change a damn thing.'' the camera shifts to a view of the front of the gravestone. on it is written, 'RIP' with a blurred out name beneath it, with the year of birth being 1992 and the year of death as 2011. there is a hole in front of the grave that looks as if something tore up the ground. rhie continues, ''i don't use that name... but i guess i'm glad i crawled free.''


june 28, 2026

if you weren't here to watch me struggle to this point, you probably wouldn't have believed me when i told you how long it took.

extra:

a drawing of rhie sitting next to text. the text reads: i think at some point i rejected the symbol of a fox because i didn't want to be something with universal appeal. i wanted others to struggle to relate to me, and to struggle to like me. maybe because i felt it would filter out the insincere. maybe because i didn't feel likable. no need to set up false expectations. of course, i know now it doesn't work like that. either way, because of a choice i made as a child, foxes will be a part of my identity forever.

obviously, nobody does stuff like this with such pointed intentionality. i didn't one day decide, "fuuuck, foxes are so normie-coded. i should make my fursona something less boring." over the course of years, my tastes changed and the way i interacted with my peers changed in reponse to how they interacted with me. your fursona is you, and how you present yourself shapes how people perceive and interact with you. it's why emo and goth kids wear black clothes covered in spikes.

being a girl on the internet is stupid and bad. especially when everyone thinks you're a pretty 16 year old girl because you draw your fursona as an idealized version of yourself, and you unintentionally act like a manic pixie dream girl to anyone who pays attention to you due to being crushingly lonely in real life. eventually, you get sick of that, or you figure out that it draws unwanted attention.

my first fursona was a fox because i loved foxes. my second was a rabbit because i loved rabbits. and my third was a bird because i loved birds. each was a reflection of my changing tastes. when i figured out i wasn't cis, i wanted a persona that was androgynous. when i figured out that i was masculine (early 20s), that was when i decided i didn't care about making a pretty fursona anymore. that's where white came from. white was an expression of my love for dinosaurs and birds, and i wasn't trying to look pretty for anyone anymore. i didn't want to have social appeal, i wanted to be authentic. i'm not implying anything negative about people who design fursonas with aeshetic appeal in mind, i have no problem with such a thing, because each of us is different and has different ways of making ourselves happy. if being pretty makes you happy, by all means.

now i'm circling back around to foxes, not because i particularly love foxes at this point in my life; truthfully, i don't. the real reason is because, as i have made incredibly obvious with my constant repetition (not intentional btw), but i am trying to reconnect with a past that i had tried to throw away. i don't care about foxes now, but i did when i was a child, and so that makes them important to me. there is something a little bit embarrassing about it, but i haven't worked out what it is yet.

archive, previous.
take me away from here.


words and images © wren white, 2026.