My first dive into the furry fandom came about through watching and interacting with sizeplay creators: artists like  Nommz, writers such as  Jevin,  Tirrell, and their cloaker stories, and the communities that formed around it. Since I never practiced art myself, I dove hardest into what I was good at: writing. While the vast majority of the stories I read revolved around a contemporary world with concerns of a hopeful future of acceptance, my creative insight wondered about a past before: before internet, cell phones, apps and widespread computers, and all those trappings of modern life that seek to capitalize off our entire being.

Enter Mirabeu.

I initially envisioned a quiet relationship between a gentle librarian and a brash mechanic in the semi-arid town struggling to bridge awkwardness, prejudice, fear, and uncertainty in a period before the revelation of cloakers to the Neotrian public, micro registrations, and unity protests that hallmark cloaker stories, but, through the people I've met, friends I've made, writing I've shared, and material I've read, that vision budded into a wider cast reflecting aspects of living in a society that might not regard you as wholly human (or...furry? You know what I mean). I won't be the first or the last to highlight that macro/micro literature include themes of being "beneath view" and/or "above restraint" which cross with sex, gender, class, civic protections, personhood, and god knows how many more relevant essences.

If you didn't notice before, you might now see such topics manifesting in Mirabeu's cast: Rangy, Elain, Kathy, Camohtli, and, the subject of this picture, Lawrence.

With the furry fandom being supremely lgbtq+ positive, I initially struggled with what degree of past queer discrimination and IRL struggles to incorporate, if at all (whether personal hatred or systemic violence), yet with the central conceit of being Requoran or Hayacastian in a Neotrian world, the struggle revealed itself to be a specter. If I did write a world based on these themes, how could I justify saying yes, the hardship of Rangy's economic and educational woes or Kathy's blind attempts to assimilate as "one of the good ones" are worthy of discussion and dissection, but all else gay assumes parity or justice. Even just by my own ace experience, I could not allow my own trepidity to rule on that. So yes, in Mirabeu, the queer experience among a "large" society is, at best, subtext for outer eyes. But for the reader who sees what Lawrence sees and reads what Lawrence feels, the text is apparent.

For the star salesman at Maxim's Electronic Boutique: Custom Home Phones, Radios, and Record Players who also leads a double-life as a cloaker technician, Lawrence stands proud in his own way, wearing his cloaker on his tail and colors on his chest. You beautiful gay man, you; you have always been here.

Lawrence is mine~

Art by the towering  TheTiedTigress