About foxes, furry, therianthropy and me:

I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't identify as a fox.
It may seem strange, but some of my earliest memories are of wanting to be a fox, not a human.

Because of my feelings that I am a fox, and my equally strong desire to be a fox, I first conceived of my fursona in the late 1980s, as a self-insert character for fanfiction I would write and/or illustrate.

I discovered the furry fandom in early 1996, when I found furry art of foxes in a newsgroup concerning html learners and website building.
I couldn't believe other people with characters like Slava were out there. I was hooked immediately, then went looking for more art of foxes.
I was a bit young (twelve years old) and got exposed to things that I probably shouldn't have.
The internet had far fewer safety rails in those days and the fandom was smaller and much more adult.
It was bound to happen.

Other than the adult material that I should have been barred from, I found a lot of wonderful art of foxes that made me feel like the people drawing and viewing that art - the furry fandom - would be a place where I would not only fit in, but be welcomed.
This was true, and I've mostly enjoyed my time spent interacting with the fandom and consuming furry art.

After a few months, I began to realize that most other furries didn't feel like I did concerning species.
That's when I found therianthropy, via a yahoo search that led me to were forums, then the therian community at large.
Although young, I contributed designs that were instrumental in the development of what we now recognize as the theta-delta symbol used by many therians.

Over my nearly thirty years interacting with the furry and therian communities, I have involved myself in a great many endeavors with some great successes, such as my private trust that served autistic furries, and some which ended in colossal failures, such as my ill-fated Second Life community.
I've never let my failures and false starts hold me back. Like any intelligent and self-aware being, I learn from my failures and strive to always be better in all that I do.

Now, I find myself leading yet another endeavor, a furry house we call "El Furado: City of Silicone."
You can learn more about that here, but first, let me tell you about my fursona!

Slava is a lot of things, but first and foremost, I created Slava as a stand-in for myself in my imagined scenarios and fan fiction set in many fictional universes, such as Disney's Robin Hood, Sonic comics, TMNT, and really any other media that featured characters of an anthropomorphic nature.
This hints at the nature of my fursona; an idealized extension of myself that helps me realize my fantasies and feel more like myself, rather than merely a character I enjoy.

Slava is as real as he can be, now. I am him, he is me, and almost no one knows me by any other name.

Slava does have a fictional backstory and such, but as time has gone on and we have become the same being, this has mattered less and less. I'll tell you anyway, though. Why spoil the fun?

Slava is from a medieval time period - think Robin Hood - and existed happily as a petty thief robbing travelers within a county of a kingdom he no longer cares to remember the name of.

The wrinkle came when Slava unwittingly robbed a feline time traveler who was carrying a personal temporal displacement device, or a man-portable time machine.

Since figuring out what the device was and how to work it - which involved a lot of trial, error, and dinosaurs - Slava began using the time machine for his own purpose; to become the greatest thief across all time and space.