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Considering most people's fursonas do not match them at all, whether it be in personality or in physical appearance, I'd have to say a good portion of the fandom is lying to itself.

For example, I was initially a generic slim fox f*****t with an unquenchable sex drive, and now I'm a bear with a sarcastic and nihilistic outlook on life with a street/eclectic style of dressing. My bear character is still slim and I am not, but that's only because I have a lot of problems with showing my fursona how I really am.

I'm actually very much like fursona. my fursona is a snow leopard. And although she is drawn at most times thin, I do not advertise it so on the reference page and encourage artists to draw her more like myself.

Hmm.. I picked the snow leopard because one, I have always loved them and I feel they are the most beautiful felines in the world. Also, their characteristics are much like my own.
I guess you could say that it was love at first sight and I can't imagine myself as any other type of animal. I have other anthro characters, but the snow leopard is -me-

Admitadly, when I first started into the fandom back in like late 1994, I picked a black leopard as my fursona because it was aesthetically pleasing to me and it also fit in other areas such as where I wore only black clothing at the time, and the darker and quieter personality that I put with him was a good match for how I actually was in real life at that time. I also based it off the shadowy feline forum who has lived in my skull with me for as long as I can remember, but lets not get into that one for the moment. wink

Needless to say, I've always had the feline presence within me... this is and was something obvious to anyone who ever knew me. There was never any question that, personality and trait wise, I was a feline. I also consider myself a Therian and not so much a fur but it's close enough to fit into the fandom, and I'm typically tolorant of furs and how they tend to be sometimes... so mostly it works out. wink

It took me a few years to match myslf to a cougar, but when I did it was a solid match. It's the feline I feel I have the most in common with personality and trait wise, and most who know me and know much about cougar's will agree. When it came to designing my anthropomorphic fursona, I based it off myself as much as possible. Body type, weight, hair style, even the purple tinted prescription glasses I wear and the types of clothing I wear (or usually lack there of) wink

So I guess I need both the first and second options in your poll, as I always knew... I was just born that way in the same reguard that I was born a homosexual caucasian male... but it did take me a few years to define a character that was enough like me to represent myself in the fury world. 3nodding

I found a cute picture of an anime character as a kitten so I used the picture to roleplay and flirt with women by acting cute and cuddly. Because girls like the cute and cuddly, and I'm neither.

Thus, my fur identity as a feline was born.

There's...a lot of confusion with me over my fursona and such, so here it goes...

Since my earliest memories of getting into the fandom, I was really into werewolves. Werewolves are what got me into the fandom. So naturally, I stuck with the wolf as a fursona. At that point, I never had much more details than that in regards to my fursona.

More recently, I have attempted to make my fursona more like me. This has somewhat failed and been a success. This is because of two reasons.

1. I attempted to make it appear more like me to some degree. Since I have brown hair, I decided my fursona was a brown wolf. In...about the past year or so, I've thought about maybe adding some lighter spots here and there to the fur since I was originally blond. Wolves are not blond, of course, but they do have lighter browns, tans, greys, and whites. Not entirely sure how I'll incorporate that if I do.

2. It wasn't too long ago that I really tried to match my fursona to my heritage. This is long and boring, but interesting to me anyway. Here's what I did for my process of figuring this out.

A. I was drawn to canines, particularly to the more wild variety. Because of this, I knew I wanted it to be canid of some variety or another.

B. I have a very mixed heritage, so I had to come up with a way to give this some sort of numbering system or point system to help organize everything.

C. I'm English, Irish, Dutch, Greek, and Cherokee.

D. I looked up what sorts of wild canines were in those particular areas (England, Ireland, Netherlands, Greece, and the Eastern US). I then made a list of each species there.

E. Some of these species overlapped, with the same wolf and fox variety in England as in Ireland, so what I did was assign them each one point for every time they showed up.

F. After assigning points, I also assigned an extra point to each species where in I had more closer relatives from that lineage (Greek, Cherokee, etc).

G. I took the ones with the most points and decided they would most likely the the ones my fursona would be. The end result was that I would be a folfyote (Wolf + Fox + Coyote).

However, I never really adopted this as my fursona... But I'm still holding on to it. Maybe someday I can make it into a character that pops up in my art a lot. Since I've never really sat down and determined all the features of my fursona, it's stayed undeveloped for a long time. I still don't know it's fur pattern or the exact hue and shade of its fur color. Maybe one day I'll figure that all out...

...Though I can say my fursona is the baddest alpha ever in the entire fandom, and that's totally me. ninja

Actually, now that I think about it, people in general are the same.
Is HoneyLips143 really that super model in that picture she sent to you? Probably not.
Is anyone in any advertisement free of photoshopped changes? Doubtful.
When you buy that new pair of jeans, will you be hip and trendy and super attractive just like those people in the GAP commercials? Unless they're magic jeans you traded your cow for, I don't think so.
Does every little forest critter have it's own little story as National Geographic portrays? No, it's nature, there is no story.

Really now, reality is just too boring, dull, and despairing. It's more enjoyable when life's a slightly exaggerated story and everyone has their part. Or maybe all the world's a stage... At least one person would agree with me there.