(Today, the role of frequently asked questions will be played by bold text.)

So Aros, you’re an orc now? Not a lion, or a koopa, or a combination thereof?

Yep! I’ve made the change. Full orc.

Okay, sure, but why change? What was wrong with the Lion/Koopa?

Well, to fully answer that question, I’ve got to give some history.

When I joined the fandom over 7 years ago, I chose a lion because a.) lions are cool appearance, b.) lions were NOT in the top 5 most popular species in the fandom, and c.) I appreciated the symbolism of a lion (such as strength, courage, etc.). I also made my lion be super-fit and muscular because that’s what I was into at the time. Of course, at that point, I was deeply in denial about my sexuality and was telling people that I was only bi when it came to online RP. Oh past me, you silly closeted goose.

Fast forward several years and I’ve graduated college and gotten some cool commissions with my lion character, but he feels a bit bland. Like he’s just a lion. I’ve tried to make his backstory interesting, but it usually just becomes a bad attempt at some Bruce Wayne fan-character. (How many times does he have to be orphaned, geez.) At the same time, I’d been having a lot of fun in the #koopas channel on FurNet. There’s a lot of weird fun stuff that goes on in there, and having your character get turned into a koopa is one of the many options available. It was neat, and I must have been like, maybe the third-ever hybrid lion-koopa?

Anyway, I decided it might be fun to get a commission of the lion-koopa since it was so neat. I asked Bauske if he was up for drawing it, and he created a fantastic image. So great, that I figured I would stay a lion-koopa and enjoy myself. I jettisoned the idea of a character with a backstory and embraced the whole koopa motif. It was fun for a while! A long while.

Oh my god shut up shut up shut up. Summarize that shit for me, please.

I was once a lion because I was way into wish fulfillment when I joined the fandom. Later, I became a lion-koopa since it made me feel more unique, even though it came with some problems, and meant not having a solid foundation for a character.

Wish fulfillment?

Yeah, there’s a really interesting post on [adjective][species] about this, and you should totally read it. Anyway, early on in my dealings with the fandom, I didn’t care about reflecting myself in my character because I didn’t really like myself anyway. Low self-esteem and such.

All right, so that’s the history, but what was wrong with the Lion/Koopa?

Well, for one, he didn’t really reflect me as a person. And as I’ve grown as a person, this disconnect has grown too!

So here I was with a lion-koopa that is almost entirely wish-fulfillment with barely a reflection of my actual self. I never considered myself obstinate or stubborn like a koopa might be, nor did I think I was persistent like a koopa (though I might have seen that as a positive trait).

The lion-koopa was this strange relic of my furry self from when I joined the fandom. The koopa wasn’t deep. He was hot. He didn’t have a range of emotions. He had dominant-face and submissive-face. He wasn’t a character, he was a facsimile. He was there to be viewed and nothing more.

That, and the problem with commissions.

What do you mean, the problem with commissions?

I still love Bauske’s original picture of Aros as a lion-koopa. I’ve also had some very neat and very hot commissions of the lion-koopa overall. But these great images ended up being few and far between. To the point where I was telling myself that I shouldn’t commission anyone who hadn’t drawn the character before because they wouldn’t get it right.

I should have seen this from the beginning, really. There’s a lot of Bowser porn out there, but the majority of it looks really weird. He’s a hard character to draw if you’re changing the anatomy at all (and if you’re making something pornographic, you’re changing the anatomy). So that limits your commission pool to people who can already draw Bowser decently, in a style you enjoy, and then you’re basically swapping in yourself in Bowser’s place.

And as much as I loved the images with that character, he was annoying for artists. Do you draw the shell? What build do you use? What kind of body shape? I also never got a proper reference sheet for him, so all the images had a vague inconsistency about them, looking kind of weird when put right next to each other.

So yeah, weird.

All right. Fine. Anything else you wanna get off your chest about the lion-koopa?

Yes, actually!

I also recently considered telling a couple of people who weren’t in the fandom about it, but they would inevitably ask me about my character, and I realized I didn’t want to share that.

And if you can’t share your character with other people, then what business do you have using that character to represent you?

So you figured out that you wanted to change fursonas, okay. So why orcs?

Orcs are cool! For many reasons. But mostly because I already had an orc character that I was very fond of.

And that character started how?

Well, I’d been roleplaying on Tapestries MUCK (henceforth referred to as TAPS), and I’d always loved RPing with orcs. Loved the big burly warrior shape, the confident stature, and the inevitable broken language they spoke in. I liked the smart orcs even more, the ones who never quite fit their own type. My boyfriend even had an orc character he made, and I decided that I wanted to create my own orc that I could play in scenes with him.

That’s where Brex came from.

Let’s hypothetically say that I’m more interested in why you think orcs are cool. In reality, I’m getting another martini, but please do go on.

There’s always been a pretty big appeal for orcs for me. When you’re into big bulky guys, what’s not to like? They’ve got the whole beast-man look down pat, and most of the images in the fandom around orcs show them in a cool and/or sexy light.

Orcs also have a lot of crossover appeal into tabletop gaming and other fantasy settings, which works for me as a guy who likes to write fantasy anyway!

I did a little bit of research into the origin of the concept of an orc. Orcs (or orks) were popularized by J.R.R. Tolkien in the Lord of the Rings books, but the word orc comes from the latin “Orcus”, which is the demonic Roman god of Death. The etymology is a little scattered, meaning all kinds of things like “underworld” “hell” “devil” “evil creature” and “ogre.” So orcs have a decidedly sinister origin.

But modern depictions of orcs aren’t 100% evil. Not even close. Especially in the furry fandom. We’ve got sympathetic orcs, who don’t have giant tusks or blood smeared across their bodies. More often than not, you find them as generally civilized, if a bit rough in bed. It’s almost as though the general consensus of orcs as a whole has evolved from “evil nasty thing” to “big misunderstood brute.” Hell, even if you look at stuff like Orcs Must Die!, you hear them complaining about where they parked and how annoying it is to go on giant raids. Which is a hilarious detail from that game, I might add.

(Caveat: I’m omitting stuff like Warhammer orcs and WoW orcs and their lore, since that belongs to their respective franchises. I’m more going with general perception of orcs.)

The next topic may make some of you uncomfortable, so feel free to skip to the next section if it does.

I grew up religious, particularly Protestant Christian, so it’s kind of a weird run-around that I ended up choosing a character that has roots in “evil” and “underworld” and “demon” stuff. But charting the evolution of the depiction of orcs, again especially in the furry fandom, I can see a little bit of a comparison. I come from a background where humans are considered to be at war with their selfish, morally reprehensible nature. But with the way that the representation of orcs has grown from “evil” to “barely civilized”, it strangely reflects that journey. Even if I have a lot of problems with certain pieces of theology, it’s nice to see a parallel like this. So what if at the core, we’re all monsters? We’re monsters together, struggling to get better.

Sorry I was too busy finding the right olive for this martini to pay attention. Sum it up for me?

The perception of orcs has evolved from evil to big friendly brute, and I always liked big friendly brutes and identified with the archetype.

All right, so what’s great about this orc in particular?

Oh man, Brex is great! I am super biased though.

Brex brings together my recent joy over fantasy and magic systems, the way I value creativity and intelligence, and the previously mentioned coolness of orcs in general. He’s the archetype of the beastly genius, the inherent contradiction of a massive warrior guy crossed with a desire to learn and analyze instead of maim.

You’re going to talk for a while about this, aren’t you? I need another drink.

Correct! If you don’t want to read a bunch of this stuff, you can skip it!

Brex is an orc with the body and blood of a warrior who basically said “nah, I’d rather study magic, see you guys.” He’s generally very shy and introspective, spends a lot of time reading both fiction and non-fiction, and just trying to get better at magic overall. His specialty is illusions, because of his deep-seated desire to fit in to both his traditional orc family background and also the generally not-orc-like mage culture.

Rather than cast spells, he prefers to enchant small pieces of jewelry like rings and amulets that allow him to mildly alter the perception of his appearance. (Not his actual burly self, but rather how everyone sees him, including himself.) He’s got an accessory for everything, from changing his race to slightly altering his build or shoe size. And if he doesn’t have it, he’ll make one by buying some beaten-up necklace or ring at the market or pawn shop, polishing it, and enchanting it. This is why he has a bunch of pockets and such on his armor. Also, in the world he comes from, there’s no magical benefit to wearing robes, and they’re seen as clothes only apprentices would wear.

For a while, he worked at the same magic academy where he studied, teaching magic to newbies and researching new avenues and applications of illusion magic. He even contributed to the leading textbook for young and curious mages! (But they used an elf for the cover, what jerks.)

He’s recently taken a liking to adventuring, going along with squads of mercenaries so they can have an on-demand enchanter, because the pay is good, he doesn’t have to be on the front lines, and he gets to commune with nature like his kind has traditionally done.

He takes offense at being lumped in with other orcs, especially since his new adventuring gear tends to imply he has physical skill. But he tries to show his distinction by having impeccable hygiene and refusing to wear any tribal markings except for the small one under his collarbone that denotes his immediate family. It’s easy enough to hide under clothes, too.

He won’t tell anyone, but he has more, uh, morally questionable enchanted items in his possession. Like an aphrodesiac necklace, and an “endowment” ring, and even more complicated illusory enchantments that mess with the wearer’s head. He’ll never admit to having these, though.

One last thing: He generally gets embarrassed anytime someone compliments him for any reason and scratches the back of his neck and makes this adorable smile, which only serves to make things worse because then people say how cute he is!

Great, now that you’ve got that out of your system, let’s ask the deep questions.

I thought I went pretty deep here.

I mean the stuff that matters to us. Like what the hell do we call you? Aros? Brex? Floppy Green Dick Man?

Well, I consider Aros my screenname in the furry fandom, regardless of the baggage with the lion or koopa character. In fact, I’m sticking with my accounts as Aros, so you can definitely call me that.

Brex is a character I play, and the guy I choose to visually represent me in the fandom now. He’s a separate entity, but I’ll still answer to that name too.

Floppy Green Dick Man could mean any orc, so no, I will not answer to that.

I have a headache.

You should maybe drink more water when boozing it up.

Shut up.

I think I’ve covered everything so I will shut up now! If you, dear reader, have any more questions, I’ll answer them as soon as I can.

-Aros