#valakiir

i consider a LOT of things when im assigning animal forms/actually i tend to start with the animal form when i'm creating characters, because i find that a bit easier, but in this case obviously it was the other way around and the fact remains i go through a LOT of things. i think about their cultural relationship w/ humans and how they're portrayed, historical stuff, but most of all the number one thing is always the animal's Actual Behavior.

with wolves, if someone is a wolf, the sort of hallmark trait that will make me define them as a wolf over any other animal i might have narrowed it down to is that above all else, for better or worse, family is the most important part of their lives. for fjord, an orphan who had a whole ass long complicated journey around learning to be accepted for who he is and all, i'd say that hits pretty true.

additionally, there's the tension between wolves and dogs which fits well with his struggle with the whole half-orc thing as well as his feeling very out of place on land a lot of the time, even if he's good at acting otherwise (sailor beached on land and all).

there's ALSO the whole perception of wolves culturally with them being regularly maligned as terrible, evil creatures when their actual behavior is just a very family driven species (a tension that's VERY important to altered, actually, but i shant say more about that yet. bewarethekingofwolves etc). and they are SO family driven like i said; they're apex predators, which in the same way caduceus described being a beast of burden as something that can mean multiple things depending on how he chooses to interpret it, being an apex predator is also something that can mean a lot of things, but its important to note with wolves that the reason they hold that spot is specifically because they are cooperative pack hunters.

But the tension again relates well both to fjord's half-orc struggles of not feeling like he fits anywhere and ALSO reflects his whole toxic masculinity thing. i could keep going on about this.

there is unfortunately one problem. wolves aren't the least bit aquatic.

technically, FULLY aquatic animals are no-gos for animal forms for logistical reasons--you can't shift forms if doing so will harm you, so any animal that starts dying the moment you take it out of the water is just not allowed (primates are also off limits but that's because of historical racism but thats another conversation). HOWEVER. semi-aquatic is fine and i knew like, the water is too important to fjord for him to not be something good at swimming. now, there's a subspecies of sea wolf that's slowly evolving in that direction up in vancouver, and if we lived in a reality in which those guys started evolving a few million years earlier and were already like fully obviously something that swims enough for my liking, i woulda jumped on that and been done with it. but we dont live in that world so me and my friend had to get back to the drawing board.

had a lot of points to look for, at least: apex predator, cooperative pack hunter, tension between portrayal in media/perception by humans vs the animal's actual behavior, huge focus on family life. but also needed to be aquatic enough to fit fjord.

and at some point one of us, i think he did but im not sure, mentioned giant river otters, so i did some reading and uh yeah it turns out giant river otters are EXACTLY that. they don't have the exact same reputation as wolves, which is the one thing i was less thrilled about, they're viewed more as pests than an actual threat by people who live near them locally, but at the same time any time you look at comments of like a youtube short of them, or try looking up documentaries, a lot of it is like look at these BIG SCARY HORRIBLE-LOOKING NASTY BOYS. they're like the cute little button eyed otters you know but BIT and CREEPY and DANGEROUS

(they are family creatures who live in the same social structure as wolves, with mom and dad in charge and a year or two's worth of older pups helping raise the youngest ones, then slowly dispersing as they grow old enough to want to establish their own territories and families. they share food with each other if someone's struggling to catch any fish. they can hunt CAIMANS sometimes. they bully any jaguar who goes swimming in their territory. they make little squeaky noises and apparently even produce a sound similar to a purr when they're content. yes they can be dangerous to humans in their territory but like it's their territory just leave them alone)