Orvan's Origins

[vakkotaur]

One of the recent LJ phenomena going around is a set of replies to be made to any commenter. I have commented on a few of these now and gotten some replies. One of the replies is a question, and in this case the question deserves a rather lengthy answer.

Why an Ox? And why a Delivery Ox at that?

First, an explanation of Vakkotaur to fill in some background. Eventually I had need of another IRC character and settled on a bull but didn't want people saying "cow" for reason that should be obvious. Looking at historical names, ox seemed a good fit. Yes, I know most oxen are neither cows nor bulls, at least not for very long. But I'm using the older definition as there is no widely recognized modern singular other than "cow."

Why a bovine at all? I think it was that I wanted something considered fairly strong or powerful, but not too wild. Bears and big cats and such didn't quite seem to fit in the "Would I like to be/play one?" way for me. Dogs and cats and other things generally in the housepet category didn't feel right either. It seems I have some attraction to (large?) domestic or domesticatable animals as even when I come up with a joke character, it fits that. One such joke was Llawrence Llama, for example.

The delivery shtick was an accident or an inspiration. One night on IRC kinkyturtle was "singing" as only he can (fail to) sing. I'm not sure why, but the idea of having Orvan be a deliverer for ACME came to me and KT got a pie or a bomb.

When I started attending furcons I wasn't really sure if they were for me. I went to AnthroCon and felt overwhelmed as I spent more time looking for people than with people - and felt overall lost in the rush. I tried again the next year at Rocket City FurMeet and actually met people, including chakawolf who I first met when he was in suit, doing a neat bit where he tried to register as Chaka Wolf and, to his amazement, succeeded. I started considering fursuitting but not too seriously. I was carrying more weight then and my heat tolerance was lousy. I also saw a good partial suit and thought about that as that would mean heat wouldn't be quite as big an issue.

I went to MFF, and returned to RCFM. The Monday after RCFM 3, I think, Chaka let me try his Chaka Wolf suit on for a while and I went outside and through the lobby and had a good, if short and hot, time. Now I started getting a bit more serious about a fursuit of my own.

But what character for a suit? I considered doing it myself and started getting the generic materials. As I'd be doing it, it couldn't be too complicated. That meant a centaur was out, due to quadruped complexity. Vakko, being a Warner rather than a species people recognize would have some issues -- including being a WB derived character even if he wasn't Yakko, Wakko, or Dot. A horse would have been nice, but I knew I'd be way too picky about how the head looked. That pretty much left Orvan, which worked out in a couple ways. There aren't that many bovine suits, so he wouldn't be "Yet another fox" or such. And he had the ACME delivery shtick already, so he'd have something to do at least some of the time. The cowtail bit at MFF was something of an accident: Halloween plans didn't work out.

As things went it, I wound up having kiwihunter8 make the partial suit, which was for the best. Orvan turned out better than I expect he would have had I made the partial myself.

Comments

[malterre.livejournal.com]

That was a nice summary of A LOT of entries you made :)
But thank you for sharing that.