So I've done a lot of soul-searching since the pandemic, and I have come to a long-overdue realization about myself. I was no longer happy with being Berkley the bear/tiger hybrid. After a couple of years of debate and indecision, I have decided to make the jump to being an otter.

When I first joined the fandom back in 2005, I was a teenager. I probably shouldn't have been where I was at the time, and I certainly shouldn't have been doing the things that I was at that time. I was a werewolf first, and then just a wolf named uncreatively Wolfie. Wolfie got me through 5 years of the fandom and I have kept him around and retooled him over the years. But in 2010, as I really entered into my adulthood, I realized that I didn't feel like a wolf, as much as I loved them. I didn't feel like the wolf that everyone knew me as, and I felt overlooked and unassuming to most people. I wanted to be seen and I wanted to be heard. At the same time, I had just discovered the "bear" side of the fandom and I wanted to dive deep into that lifestyle.

After I created Berkley the bear/tiger hybrid, I did something I'd never done before with Wolfie: I wrote a backstory and a canon for Berkley to exist in. Over the years, and through my Lifelines comic with  Hiishougeki I channeled Berkley and created a ton of new characters to boot, many of whom have shown up in my gallery over the years. While the comic failed to launch any interest beyond a couple of people, I kept my friend who helped me work on it and I kept Berkley.

At the same time, having created Berkley, it was a way to idolize and idealize the kind of person I wanted to be. As I entered adulthood in 2009 and 2010, I realized how frail and insecure I felt. I had people abandoning me left and right, immature fights with people I regret. I was not a mature, smart, or rational person, and yet I was desperate for attention and love. I wanted people I cared about to care about Berkley. Sadly, many did not. Many saw me as playing a role that they didn't like, and many thought I'd never be capable of being Berkley in the real world, no matter how tangentially, which had always been the goal. I gained weight, I worked on my mental state excruciatingly despite massive setbacks like a breakup that left me with CPTSD and triggered my PDD into a state that neither acronym have ever really left me. Even now, I am so scarred by the abandonment that happened to me in the early half of the 2010s that I find it nearly impossible to trust people. If I don't hear from someone in a conversation after a day or two, I usually assume they don't care enough to be interested, and I don't pursue them. This was not a side effect of creating Berkley, but for 15 years I kept pushing the narrative that a big bear doesn't need anyone.

When I realized in 2015 or 2016 that I was asexual instead of just gay, it caused more abandonment. I've received death threats from people, on this site and others. I've been told to end my life simply because Berkley and other characters were too attractive and yet I was emotionally unavailable or worse, unavailable physically. I was bullied off of several social media sites, including Barq and Ferzu. Never once has anyone ever apologized to me for their hatred. When I spoke up at an ace panel at a convention in 2025, the room was shocked that this had been the case for me. Nobody else in that room had ever had those kinds of threats leveled at them. Nobody. In a room so crowded people were literally without chairs. It was disheartening, disturbing, and frankly, alienating amongst those who should identify with me.

Yet I kept at being the bear even when I started to meet people who thought I was Berkley in reality. I acted like him, talked like him. I was no longer roleplaying as him, I simply was him. But to me, the gulf between character and reality was still an ocean I couldn't cross. To me, Berkley was unobtainable. I wanted to be obtainable. I formed a relationship with my boyfriend several years ago now, and he and I are quite happy together. Recently, we've even included a trial run for a third to join us in the relationship and things to a point seem to be going smoothly between us all. I know that I am loved, cared for, wanted, and desired in a community that, in the last 20 years, has all but cast me aside and left me for dead or actively wished it on me.

When the pandemic hit, there was a lot of misinformation here in America. A lot of anger, a lot of protesting, and a lot of inequality on full display. I come from a region of the country known famously (or infamously) for being racist and prejudiced. I've experienced racism and prejudice in my life, both from being asexual and yes, from being a white guy in America. As the country further and further erodes itself, I found myself less and less willing to write. Between being asexual and therefore no longer "getting off" to my own writing and a deepening desire for true character development and a canon universe that was more of a desperate escape into a reality where things turned out okay in the end, I stopped writing. You've noticed it if you still follow me on this website and pay attention. I'm betting maybe 3 people are reading this journal end to end, if that. Most of you will not even read this far. That's fine, I'm happy to say what I want like this now.

I don't feel proud to be an American anymore. In fact, I actively hate it. I want out of this country like a trapped animal wants out of a cage. But since I am stuck here and those feelings grow stronger by the day, I have distanced my fursona from this reality. If I can't ever leave this country and go some place where I will be accepted and loved as a human being without fear of death threats or being told that I am a terrorist simply because I do not agree with the regime in charge, then I can force a place to exist in my own mind where I am. And so Miguel was formed.

Miguel Javier Santos Reyes has a complex, deep backstory, full of memories, core events in his life, reality-mixed-with-fantasy style storytelling. I have enough pages of written documentation on him alone to start a novel, and none of that is the worst writing I've ever done. It's my best writing. It's the writing that makes Miguel feel so real and nuanced and personal that he might as well actually exist in this world right now, even though I know he doesn't and never will. I have created an otter that I love with all of my heart, and while I know he doesn't exist, I can safely say that if he did, he would be someone I'd happily give the wheel to in order to finish this journal. But since he doesn't, it's just me at the helm.

To address the elephant in the room, no, I am aware that this seems like cultural appropriation. Part of the debate that I've had over the last 2 years has been with a couple of furries from Latin America, usually supportive of my feelings and endeavors. They are all aware of Miguel and how I treat him and how I make him act, they know that he is not a stereotype or meant to represent an ideal that does not exist. He is real, raw, and unfiltered through any sort of rose-tinted glasses. He is the identity that I wish I had known about when I created Berkley. He is truly me in a lot of ways, even if as a fursona there is no way that he can represent me by being a Mexican when I am an American. But as I've been told, "A Mexican is born wherever he chooses," and I will stand by that statement that a friend gave me.

So where do I go from here? Well, after 20+ years in the fandom, I no longer feel the need to write smut or transformation fiction for people. I no longer feel the need to express myself sexually or reach out to people who don't care about me or want to know a thing about me. I no longer feel included in this fandom. But I am still here, I exist, and damn it I deserve to exist however I want to. If I am merely a lurker for the artists who catch my eye, a buyer to an artist who draws amazing work and should be praised and will catch my commission money, or if I am a writer who just doesn't see a point in writing what he loves for a fandom that doesn't care, then so be it. I haven't abandoned the fandom. My canon universe is full of anthropomorphic characters, I prefer to think of them over human characters even to this day. I have a world that I've built, a novel that I wrote that I still haven't published that would fully illustrate the kind of world and morals and people who fill that world. I have a lot of stake in a community that has given me more than half of my life's experiences and near-totally my online experiences and friendships. I have a lot of care and compassion for those who want to reach out and touch me. I just don't like being touched sexually, and the furry fandom doesn't like that I'm in my 30s typically. In 20 years, will I see a need to come back for a 40th anniversary post? No, probably not. Hell, I barely made a thought about it being 20 years last year and am only now celebrating because I've changed who I am for the third time in 20 years and 6 months in the fandom. I'd say I have earned the right to be here just like everyone else, and I will not apologize for that. Do I feel like I should disappear? A lot. But I'm not going anywhere, even if you don't hear from me for a while still.

Thank you all for reading this, if you read it. You who know me best know that I put my heart on the line for this journal. And if you don't know me? Welcome to my life, pull up a chair and ask me something if you want to know more. I don't bite. What we need now is civility in these trying times, hope, love, and a little faith that things will get better. I know they will. We just have to work at it.

Here's to 20 more years.