Señor GUCCI is Born

My story is heavily based on Pop culture and Furry fandom. This might be an over-generalization, but following is my opinions and analysis on the subjects.

1. Pop culture

Pop culture is a modern popular culture transmitted via the mass media and aimed particularly at younger people. Pop culture itself is very broad, so I want to narrow it down by pointing out a few icons that directly influenced me. I was influenced by Kanye West, Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian, and Nicki Minaj as I was growing up. Their aesthetic influenced how I perceive and produce images. And recently, I was introduced to ‘floptok’, which is a TikTok subgenre that produces memes regarding pop culture icons such as Cardi B, Doja Cat, CupcakKe, Trisha Paytas, Paris Hilton, Jiafei, and the Kardashian-Jenners. This also influenced me heavily. Pop culture influenced me in many ways, but I’d like to focus on two subjects: materialism and sex-positivity.

1-1. Materialism

Pop culture is heavily related to materialism. It all starts from celebrities. Pop music often includes brand names in their lyrics. Some artists would even engrave brand names into their professional names, Gucci Mane for example. This means you’ll be hearing those brands every time you’re listening to your favorite icons’ music. Plus, our favorite celebrities often do brand deals with designers. This makes fans crave luxury fashion their favorite pop stars enjoy. Wild, attention-stealing designs of luxury goods combined with celebrities’ perfect faces and bodies make fans hungry for a piece of Gucci for their own. If not wealthy enough to afford one, they will still stare at pretty pictures of their favorite stars carrying Birkins and dream of buying one for themselves one day.

Gucci and Birkins are one of the most influential fashion items in pop culture.

Gucci is considered ‘entry-level luxury’ when compared to more expensive counterparts, like Louis Vuitton or Chanel for example. Also, under Alessandro Michele’s directing, Gucci produced ‘branding in your face’ designs such as monogram prints or bold logo details. That’s why people who want to show off would most likely buy Gucci before any other luxury items. It’s affordable, and if you’re wearing Gucci, everyone knows you’re wearing Gucci.
Birkin is a famous handbag design by Hermes. Birkins are polar opposite of Gucci. Unlike Gucci, Birkins are hardly affordable and provided exclusively to VIP buyers. Even seeing one in the flesh isn’t easy. This gives them the mysterious allure they’re famous for. You can easily find celebrities showing off their Birkin collections online. Exclusivity combined with celebrity marketing, Birkins became one of the most iconic and sought-after it-bags of pop culture.
Not all Birkins are the same. It can range from $10,000 to a couple of million dollars. Some are common whereas some are more rare, more exclusive, and most importantly, more iconic.
And I can say with confidence, Himalayan Birkin is the most iconic of all the Birkins. It gained significant publicity. Pop culture icons such as Kardashians and Cardi B were spotted sporting them. Media delivered news after news about how Himalayan Birkin broke records for the most expensive handbag to be auctioned ($450,000 is the highest the Himalayan Birkin was sold by far). That combined with the fact that the bag itself is made of rare albino crocodile skin and sometimes the hardware is iced with diamonds, it was destined to reign as the King of all Birkins.

1-2. Sex-positivity

Most of the pop culture icons I follow are sex-positive. Which makes all the original contents (music lyrics, music videos, movies, and reality shows) and derivative contents (memes, commentary, gossip, and Twitter wars)I consume are also sex-positive. These contents taught me I’m free to be whoever I want to be and I’m the one who has control over my body. Sex-positivity made me question a lot of things: traditional gender roles, sexual orientation, marriage system, and pornography. And most importantly, normalization of eroticism.

Pop culture often depicts erotic subjects in a very casual way. Nicki Minaj wears revealing clothes and twerks in the Anaconda music video. CupcakKe’s writings discuss all types of sexual intercourse. Kim Kardashian shows off her exaggerated body by wearing revealing clothes. Pop culture memes discuss sugar baby lifestyle and strippers. Instead of considering sex to be something disturbing and avoiding talking about it, pop culture openly talks about sex. Pop icons openly produce sexually explicit contents and the followers openly consume/reproduce sexually explicit content. Genitals are just another interesting human body part, and sexual intercourse is just another fun human interaction. There are even influencers who, instead of glorifying or belittling the lifestyle of sex workers, educate the pros and cons of being an entertainer, how to become one, and how to retire safely.
Now that eroticism is not a sin, it is often used for shock value. Nicki’s Anaconda music video made her famous. CupcakKe’s explicit lyrics made her famous. Kim’s sensual photos are what her fans are crazy for. It’s a primal but common and effective strategy to gain fame these days.

2. Furry Fandom

I define furry as a character with body of a human, head of an animal, and behavior of a human. Nick Wilde from Zootopia, Tony the tiger the mascot of Kellogg, Anubis from Egyptian mythology are some examples. And furry fandom is a group of people that produce and consume contents regarding such characters.
The furry fandom itself is also very broad. I’m mainly involved in producing and consuming muscular male furry figures, and that’s the part of the fandom I’ll be discussing. The following opinions don’t concern any other part of the fandom(female furries, cute furries, etc.) because I didn’t observe such part of fandom enough to have an opinion.
Most people of furry fandom own their own fursona(combination of the words furry and persona). Fursona can be a lot of things. It can be a direct representation of yourself, a better and improved version of yourself, etc. Designing and building backstories of your fursona help you better understand and explore yourself. Hiding yourself behind your fursona and playing the character can help you run away from your real life and forget about your problems for a while. By talking about your fursona and learning about other people’s fursona, people can relate to each other’s hardships and help each other overcome those hardships.
Fursona mostly stays on the internet, but it sometimes can materialize in real life. When fursona comes to reality, it mostly appear in a form of a person wearing special costume called ‘fursuit’. Fursuit is a costume designed to resemble one’s fursona. People who owns such fursuits appear at events such as conventions, party, etc and act as their fursona in respective fursuit.

Furries express stories of their fursona through comics, fiction, and visual novels. Within these furry literature, I've noticed some interesting patterns: unfulfilled desires, a sense of alienation, and an unjust higher power (this imight be an over-generalization, and there are many exceptions).
Some may skim through furry contents and assume that the 'unfulfilled desires' I’m referring to are solely sexual desires because many furry contents feature sexually exaggerated character designs and explicit stories. However, there’s more than just such. Characters of furry literature usually desires accomplishment, acceptance, pride, justice, excitement, and adventure — essentially, anything one would wish they had in their own life.
Out of all these themes, the sense of alienation seems to be a popular subject among furries. Whether it's a lone human in a furry world, unwanted time travel or inter-dimensional travel forced by extraterrestrial being, post-apocalyptic situations, or a gay kid getting kicked out of the house, these plots share a common element: an unjust higher power.
Whether it's society enforcing unfair ideologies, supernatural beings committing mischief or a simple natural disaster, characters in these stories are affected by powers they do not control. They may overcome the challenges by defeating these powers, but the trauma they did cannot always be undone. And they might not be able to take control of these powers at all, which means they must face cosmic horrors they cannot conquer.

3. About My Story

I wanted to create a furry visual novel, so I questioned myself: what are some of my unfulfilled desires? The answer: Gucci and the Himalayan Birkin. So, I decided to create a fursona and give him the Gucci and Himalayan Birkin he had craved for his entire life. However, nothing comes without a price.
I do not intend to criticize anything. My aim is simply to show the society as it is.