alt Hacker NewsThere is a balance to be found here.
I had the improbable experience of contracting with a community of foxes and then made up the cover story that "this is a character I play to get better smiles when I do street photography" and then made that story true.
So most of the time I am the one-and-only fox-photographer and feel unique but there are some places where a lot of beastly people are around and I think "I feel like just another fur". I don't think of myself as a fur at all but I find that being out as a hard-working therianthrope it has an effect on all sorts of closeted furs and therians and whatnot and when a fur asks me "are you a fur?" I feel bad disappointing them.
The whole thing is possible because of a database of legends that exist in folklore and pop culture. If I go out in a kitsune mask I think about 20% of people have seen Naruto or Demon Slayer and recognize who I am right away and in that situation I think of myself as the cast member at Disney whose job is easy because guests have already seen the movie. Even though I work from sinosphere legends, the fox-photographer is legible because people agree about what kind of animal a fox is anywhere there are foxes.