There are three different entities known as Thaily: First of all the artist, a person behind the art who has identified by the name of Thaily for over a decade and participates in the non-fandom art world under this name.
Second of all the character; initially conceived to function as an on-line representation of the artist, Thaily has always been something of a guinea pig for the artist to play with and has played a major role in art, stories and other creative work. She has had some design tweaks and different background stories written for her over the years, but has consistently been represented as an anthropomorphic lion/fox hybrid.
Thirdly and lastly, Thaily the avatar; as the lion/fox hybrid-Thaily moved further and further away from representing the artist, a new design was devised to embody the essence of Thaily the artist. Both the European black-billed magpie and African Crested porcupine play prominent roles in my personal beliefs, where the latter is a fairly accurate representation of Thaily the artist, as far as personalities go.
Nocturnal, preferring to live in pairs or small family groups, adaptive, omnivorous and mostly harmless until threatened. When threatened the porcupine will bristle it’s quills into a crest, rattle the quills and stomp it’s feet before it backs into enemies should the warnings not be sufficient; predators, including large predators such as lions, have been known to die of starvation and infection caused by porcupine quills, giving them good reason to pause and reconsider if the possible pay-off of attacking a porcupine is worth the trouble.
In addition to the porcupine’s buckteeth, the avatar has a set of predator’s fangs, adding an element of duality and emphasizing the dormant threat of the quills.
The magpie is a far more ethereal totem and therefor represented symbolically rather than as an actual creature. One of the things the magpie totem warns against is the tendency to want to do everything, preferably at the same time, which is represented by the 4 arms; it carries both the promise of increased productivity, and the risk of being overwhelmed and losing track of what’s what.
I don’t have any particular reason for the colours I chose, other than that I wanted something different from my usual earth tones, but not something so obnoxiously saturated it would become a “sparkle” porcupine. The colour scheme lies somewhere between gaudy and being adventurous enough to inspire me to draw the character, because like most things in my life the avatar serves to stimulate me artistically. It was created in service of my craft, as an anthropomorphic representation of my artistic ambitions, which is why it has no genitalia. It is not a species, it does not need to reproduce, it just is. And while it is female, like myself, there’s no particular emphasis on gender because I consider gender, among other things, as less important than a person’s actions.
Artist avatar, purple psuedo porcupine:
