January 11, 2025
Viper and Mira
July here! The lady not the month. It's actually January.
New Year new us. Or something. The intent was to talk a lot about just like... plans for the year. Ideas going forward. Thing is, we're actually trying to like... DO 2025 stuff right now so it makes more sense to take it as it comes I think. We'd definitely like to redesign this site a bit to make it easier to update and also to like, have it reflect the new us more. We're almost a year since self-discovery at this point.
So! Instead of looking forward, this month is for catching up. Namely, we never really covered Viper's design or Mira's new one, and this is as good a time as any.
(Thanks to Saucy for drawing his ref!)
We've had Viper kicking around for quite a while now. He did a lot of the work himself, since he's our most visually-oriented member and obviously had plenty of motivation. We tapped Saucy to do it again and god, he did a fantastic job as always.
He started off as the alter 'assigned' to our squirrel character Gin, but that was really an amalgam of a few of us, so he definitely wanted something of his own, and his first idea was something smooth and maybe reptilian. A dragon, we figured. That's a pretty open concept though, and we set out to try a few things. There was this one free VR Chat model he tried on. We even used it with friends before we were open about plurality, but it was called a dragon while being more catlike. It has horns though, and when Viper saw himself with horns in the mirror it was such an overwhelmingly euphoric feeling he had to sit down. Horns were a definite need, and he spent lots of time considering what shape he wanted. At some point during this process, he came up with the name Viper for himself, as a cool lizardy word. We've liked snakes and snake-anthros, lamias, etc for a while, but I think we still hadn't realized just how much because at that point it was more an accent on the dragon idea. If we had the time back I don't think Viper would keep the dragon part of his description.
But we also have a long-time demon obsession, and we actually took a detour into dropping the dragon aspect entirely for a while in favor of the demon stuff. The inspiration for the fur was actually from a terrible porn doujin we read years ago with a cute demon boy in it, though we wanted it to be a bit canine. We had ideas for tattoos and stuff that would have been a pain for anyone to draw, and it felt odd to him to be human alongside the rest of us, so the dragon came back and was intended to be a little bit snakey, for flavor. In the end, he discovered that he's so much more snake than dragon. Dragon was really a convenience, and he very quickly started feeling genuine therian phantom body part feelings for his horns and his fangs. Like I said, we'd probably go with 'snake demon' or even just have him be a demon and have the snake be self-evident. It's not that important: Viper is Viper.
He's found himself to be pretty open to other forms, and sometimes likes to go more snake, or more wolf. We'll probably get him a werewolf form at some point for all you werewolf fans.
(Thanks to Roxie for drawing their ref!)
Mira was Pewter at first and for a while, and that was almost correct. Thing is, the decisions we made for a sona that had to represent us fully couldn't all hold up for them. We made the character as tall as our actual body, which is much taller than Mira would want to be. It made plenty of sense in the context we were working with at the time, but it wasn't fair that they shouldn't get to have a representation that feels comfortable for them, right? They wanted a clean break. They thought the name Mira sounded good, and it stuck!
Also, it should be understood that they became Viper's pet fairly early on. He got to make a lot of decisions on this design based on his own tastes because Mira wanted that feedback from him. In particular, the collar is the same color as his fur, a pretty direct indication. The idealized self of the fursona will obviously include one's own sexuality, and in this case that required a bit of his. That just happens to be the kind of relationship those two have. Funny thing, I feel like I should leave a lot of the details for them to explain rather than do it myself. It does get a little explicitly kinky.
I think there's still a throughline between the designs, though. They've simply allowed themself to express their sexuality more freely than we had before. Still a cat, still a witch. We assigned ourselves to the suits of the tarot recently for when we need some unified aesthetics in the system. In particular we want to start streaming. Roxie did this ref on stream and Viper was able to suggest getting the cups in there. Mira has the cups. Water. It represents spiritual matters and emotions. I think they have our most spiritual side, and the look of the witch fits them very well. It represents the part of us that believes in symbols and ideas and expectations. That said, her outfit has a certain punkish aspect, and the coat was intended to take on more of a stage magician feel. It's laden with meaning, I would say! Also, they're hot.
I think this catches us up nicely. Everyone has at least gotten some attention, but there are other characters we'd like to talk about sometime in the future. Until then!