lily

Lily is my way of letting the 'feminine little side' of me out. It's hard to explain. I don't identify with being a girl at all, nor do I label myself a 'femboy', but when I get to draw Lily in cute, girly clothes I just feel so safe and comfortable. I think due to being a trans guy in the mid-2010s, it felt kind of expected that I tone down my masculinity to fit into queer spaces. But with Lily, I don't feel any shame; I don't feel any dysphoria. Lily can be a boy with a 'girl's' name and wear cute clothes all he wants, and in his universe nobody gives him or anyone around him shit for it. He's allowed to be a girly boy without feeling like he has to be a girl, or like he has to give up his femininity to be a boy.

Like most of my fursonas, Lily is heavily based on how I was at 5-7 years old. He's a bit of a shy kindergartener-through-first-grader, but all he wants to do is make friends. He loves My Little Pony (his favorite is Sparkleworks), Care Bears (his favorite is Harmony Bear), Tinkerbell, and stuffed animals. He even has a collection of Care Bears; his favorites of the bunch being Harmony Bear, Wish Bear, Love-A-Lot Bear, Lotsa-Heart Elephant, and Proud-Heart Cat. He enjoys Disney Princesses as well, and watches his favorites at least once a week.

He is mostly an oral and olfactory stimmer, carrying around his father's shirts that have been sprayed with vintage cologne. It brings him more comfort than anything else, though he gets pretty embarrassed whenever he forgets to leave it in the car when he gets dropped off for school and ends up having to hide it in his backpack. He doesn't want his classmates to know he sucks his thumb at all.

Lily loves to play games on the computer, too! He's not very good at a lot of them, even though he can read them just fine; his favorite game is a collection of digital board games, and he especially loves Snakes and Ladders. He's convinced one day he'll figure out how to play Chinese checkers, too. The computer is his dad's, so sometimes he also sits on the edge of his dad's bed and watches him play cool video games. Occasionally, Lily and his dad will watch music videos together. He really loves his dad; he's a total Daddy's Boy.

While I'm fine with a slightly younger 'sona like Rocket getting a bit of the baby treatment, I don't want people to infantilize Lily in that way. He doesn't wear diapers, he's fully potty-trained, and he's in elementary school, and he wants to appear mature for his classmates. Lily wants to play tag at recess, Lily wants to watch cartoons on TV, he wants to do everything a 5-7 year-old kid wants to do. Some people have asked why, then, do I specify if he IS to get anything baby-ish, it's a sippy cup with no handles? Mostly because I'd always steal my little brother's when he was a baby (and I was old enough to know better) and wasn't drinking from it and drink from it myself.