Recently, I've been thinking in a bit more depth about the Televassi character I use online within the furry community. The 'fursona', as much as I hate the lexicon, can mean a wide range of things for people. Sometimes its for fun, sometimes for an idealized version of themselves, and sometimes, it has a deeper, even spiritual connection.

Now, for a lot of the time I've stuck to detailing Televassi as merely an online avatar of sorts. Initially, this was because I thought that the community would not genuinely react as kindly to an account that does not have a clear anthropomorphic headpiece.

The thing is, I've been growing into the character, fleshing him out. Over the course of the rough year I've been involved in the community, he's grown into a personal character I'm quite fond of. So, in hopefully as few words as possible, I'm going to explain what this character means.

• The Wolf Aspect - Why a wolf? -

If there's one thing that's common, it's wolves. They're everywhere - not just as personal characters in the fandom, but the internet at large. Even going from research in my dissertation (which was on werewolves), the wolf is a potent, and prevalent cultural symbol. However, there's a distinction to be made here - the 'wolf' as we imagine it, it not a reflection of the animal itself, in its actuality. Rather, the wolf in culture, has a symbolic value, and it reflects various thoughts we have about the beast. They can be noble symbols, savage symbols, or mysterious symbols.

Now, the wolf has a symbolic value to me, purely because I doubt we can ever see animals as they themselves are. They'll always be symbols to us, just because we can never experience their perspective and way of thinking. We do not know what it means to be a wolf. So, what the wolf means to me, is an apparition of the wild - of intuition, of feeling. Wolves frequently, and vividly appear in my dreams, and their interactions are always to do with directions - putting me from one course to another, and often, these are to do with decisions I have to make in life. The case always with these, is that the wolf appears as a teacher - sometimes aggressive, but always ending up being gentle. Sometimes it is consoling, sometimes it is aloof, but always, when I move to the correct path, it becomes welcoming and kind. I often wake up from these dreams feeling peaceful. I know some people throw the term 'spirit guide' about. In some regards, I'm skeptical, as I try not to buy into that stuff - as it can merely turn into telling yourself what you want to hear. I don't seek dreams of wolves, or force meanings on them - it just happens. Sometimes, it doesn't happen for years. Sometimes, it happens a lot.

For example, lately I've been very worried about my future, transitioning from being a student to a job seeker. I am very much afraid, even upset at times, by feeling that I won't amount to anything, that I'm not employable, and so forth, despite excelling academically. I had another dream a couple of days ago, which involved seeking out the wolf, and after approaching in the right way; not as someone trying to take pictures, chase after it, or isolate it in the open. After waiting and listening under the cover of the forest, it came, and it was in this case, reassuring. This came pretty much after a day where I was feeling very pessimistic about my future, and it helped me have hope.

With that dream aspect out of the way, there's a more amusing tangent to this. Growing up, I was very, very scared of dogs as a little kid. They terrified me. I was lucky enough to have a school trip to go to a wolf sanctuary in the UK, where you could see them up close. To cut the story short, I was the lucky, in that I wandered off on my own round the side of the enclosure (where there was only one fence between, rather than two at the front) and got very close to the wolves while they were busy hiding from everyone else. The thing was, they came right up to the fence, and, not seeing anything threatening about them (they had a very calm, mellow demeanor) I started petting them through the fence. Oh, Health and Safety would have hated me. In short, they were friendly (unlike the dogs I'd encountered when I was younger). They even lay down and went to sleep where I was sitting.

The other irony is, at that time, I didn't care about wolves at all - it was only years after this that the dreams started happening. I don't particularly care for psychoanalysis, but in some ways, I can see a theme linking the two. The domestic stands as more violent than what has been labelled as uncivil and wild. In the same way a younger me was afraid of dogs but not wolves, I can sort of see how this may link into my thinking.

Anyway, that's pretty much why Televassi is a wolf - there's a lot of personal experience in it. I'll talk about the character specifically in another journal. I'm tired, and this was longer than I expected.