This is a much more personal piece. A vent artwork on my experience with gender dysphoria. Featuring Aster Sinclair -- my bird fursona -- and my real-life "vessel" -- the skeleton opposite to Aster. Specific callouts on my sources of dysphoria include messy hair, beard growth, a large chin, and lack of breasts.

I chose to represent my "IRL" self with a skeleton to partially anonymise myself while still having a self-portrait. I hadn't thought about this at the time, but I also think making my real self a lifeless skeleton stresses the point that my own body is an otherwise-inanimate thing. Another interpretation is the contrast between the beauty of the internal soul and the ugliness of the external body. I know who and what I am internally, but what I see in the mirror doesn't reflect who I am.

I'm only realising this in retrospect, but it's interesting to think about how I've framed this. The watermark in the background is mirrored, which confirms that this image is "being seen" on my fursona's side of the mirror. Thus, the ugly dead figure in the mirror is what is "perceived", as opposed to what is "truth", as depicted by Aster Sinclair.

edit: On a subconscious level, I think I'm also pulling from my own observation of seeing myself as very "bony" physically? I'm decently tall and I'm thin enough for a lot of bones to have surface presence.