"Maybe she'll see me differently once I've uncovered this case. Maybe she'll look at me and watch in awe."
An overly stiff, single-minded, and stubborn journalist, Rain lives with terribly crushing responsibility looming over xem like a pressurized thundercloud. It can never catch a break, because xer boss hates xem, it and its roommate Paige can hardly afford the rent, and xe's dedicated xer whole life ever since running away from xer family to putting xer brother Lincoln in jail.
Rain has been a dedicated creative ever since it was young, even if xer family never supported it. Xe toyed with every medium, but eventually settled on writing -- fictional detective mysteries, specifically, It loved stories where there were clear-cut good guys and bad guys, and the bad guys always got caught. Though, after what Lincoln did to Leonard, Rain hard pivoted to journalism specifically, despite getting xer degree in psychology.
Nowadays, it spends a lot of its time as Blair's "apprentice," which involves less forensic lab work and more chit-chat than Rain would like. Also a lot more getting roped into Blair's own criminal family history and ending up having to reunite Blair with xer siblings through any means necessary, even though they were the very masterminds behind the three murders outside Rain's apartment that sent Paige spiraling.
SKILLS
SOCIAL COGNIZANCE. As an aspiring psychology major and someone who's been in the journalism industry for about a decade, give or take, Rain is deliciously good at reading others. As cold and awkward as xe may seem at first glance, you bet it's watching your body language and word choice like a hawk on stimulants.
COVERING ITS TRACKS. Being a non-binary teenager in the 2000s with an unsupportive family meant that you had to do a lot, and I mean a lot, of sneaking around to get around your parents' rules. The experience, though regrettable, was quite handy when Rain started covering more and more dangerous crime stories. Xe may have tampered with... a few crime scenes?
WEAKNESSES
STUBBORNNESS. While this can also manifest in positive ways, usually, it doesn't. When Rain has a plan, xe sticks to it no matter what anyone else says and despite any contraindications, with often ends... the way you'd expect it to.
PEOPLE-PLEASING. Often clashing with xer stubbornness in a way that leaves xem beating xemself up after every instance for giving in when xe should've stayed put, Rain, as someone who grew up as a girl, has a deeply ingrained fawn response. Whether to Paige, Blair, Mrs. Hazard, or its mother, it's always fighting its instincts to immediately fulfill their demands. It usually loses.
RAIN
PERSONALITY
Rain was always a little introverted, but it still used to manage to light up the room wherever it went with its friendly personality. Nowadays, ever since Lincoln killed Leonard, Rain has withdrew more into xer shell. The cheerfulness was undeniably an act even back then, but now xe's dropped it entirely. Jaded, worn, and often quick to anger, Paige has complained that Rain's "no fun anymore."
Once the type to say "sure, why not?" to practically anything, now Rain is a very stick-in-the-mud, risk-averse person. Xe doesn't want to do anything xe doesn't have to, unless it will further one of xer goals, such as winning the favor of xer boss, correcting an injustice, or sometimes just making Paige happy.
TRIVIA
- Rain doesn't laugh at jokes and doesn't make them.
- Rain has top surgery scars.
- Rain doesn't celebrate Christmas, and gets really angry when someone points out that its birthday is on Christmas Eve.
- Rain has a pet bunny. I think its name is Pebbles.
- Rain is Indonesian-American. Like me. And all my other past fursonas. I can do whatever I want.
REFERENCE
CHARACTER DEVLOPMENT
(Fig. 1) Magma doodle of proto-Rain.
Rain was created on March 22, 2022, at around 10 PM. According to Discord messages with my brother I could find, I made its prototype design (Fig. 1) in 10 minutes, presumably without my drawing tablet. Its design philosophy (baby blue fur, big ears, tuft of fur-hair at the top) generally stayed the same, but as my fursona, Rain had to grow alongside my tastes and preferences.
Two days later, I drew Rain xer first reference sheet. (Fig. 2) I felt that bright blue was a better color for xer crop top than mint green, as I didn't want Rain to be a soft character. The knee shorts and bag stayed, though I quickly changed xer jarring red forehead gem to be mint green, and made one of xer split tails the same. Mint is too soft for a shirt, but just eclectic enough in these small places on its body.
I largely based its personality on myself at the time, in the self-deprecating way I tended to. For some reason, I also made Rain like bubble tea despite the fact that at the time of drawing this, I had some sort of allergic reaction and vomited the last time I had bubble tea.
Also, Rain was bisexual and explicitly used any neopronouns, reflecting the way I labeled myself in early 2022.
Ever since, Rain largely and quickly replaced Blair (called Berry at the time) as my primary fursona, who had just started feeling a bit "meh" to me. I depicted xem as an often cocky but ultimately joyous person, and in the months following xer creation I fleshed out xer backstory. Xe was an Espeon, but we couldn't have a fourth Winter sibling or else things would get messy, so I made xem Lincoln's slightly (I would later make Rain much older) older sibling, and a runaway after Lincoln killed his (and also Rain's) uncle. The finalization of this culminated in a rather silly drawing of Rain snarikly interviewing Lincoln. (Fig. 3)
Before I made Rain related to the Pulsters, xer full name was Rain Maria-Benson February, for some reason. Much of the Rain lore I came up with during this time period has been lost due to getting banned from Toyhouse in August 2022, but I remember that, at least. After I made xem a Pulster, I dropped the Maria-Benson (Frankly, I'm not even sure where that came from.) and made xer name Rain February Pulster. Due to Rain's complicated relationship with its family and the fact that I had already written substantial material referring to it with the last name February, Rain prefers to go by simply Rain February.
(Fig. 2) Rain's first reference sheet.
(Fig. 3) Rain cheerfully ruining Lincoln's reputation. (Not canon)
At some point, I made it so that Reba "blackmailed" Rain for information about the then-unnamed Snowstorm Mares. How did this happen? I don't know. Is this still canon? I don't know. As you can guess, after this point, things get a lot less concrete. Do you remember being 12? I sure as hell don't.
In 2023, I made Rain's second reference sheet (Fig. 4). By this point, xem being a journalist was well-established. I made them sapphic, and gave xem a lot more specific of a personality to work with. I still envisioned it as this goofy, mischievious reporter who had a side cunning enough to get you to confess anything for the press. However, you'll also notice something interesting: Rain was under 18. This was to reflect me, because obviously, I was also under 18, and Rain was my fursona. I also made xem like pretzels because I had a two-bags-of-snack-pretzels-a-week habit at the time.
To straighten out the logistics of Rain being an accomplished journalist at seventeen years old, I gave it a roommate, which fell to an older character of mine I hadn't really found a use for: Paige. In this earlier version of the lore, Paige had allowed Rain to live at her apartment in exchange for covering a portion of the rent, and she supplied xem with a fake ID and documents in order to do that before xe was legally allowed to.
I found this idea weird from the start, but thought it was acceptable enough to continue living in my 13 year old paradise where everyone is a teenager. Also, from this point on, "Rain's roommate" basically became Paige's whole personality, which was... bad, but it did make her more relevant in my mind to attach her to my fursona. Maybe one day he'll get to do something else.
(Fig. 4) Rain's second reference sheet.
(Fig. 5) Concept art for an older version of Rain.
On October 17, 2023, I decided to make an "older version" of Rain (Fig. 5), who would be in its mid-20s. I believe the reason for this was because NaNoWriMo was next month and I wanted to make it about Rain, and I'm assuming I realized that being an accomplished journalist at 17 was a bit implausible.
I wanted to incorporate more green into xer design, since that's my favorite color and having a blue fursona in spite of that felt a bit weird. I gave xem a full head of green hair, scars on its ears, and a very interesting jacket.
Let's dive into that jacket. In 2023, I was really into Gravity Falls, and therefore, secret codes, messages, and puzzles. So I thought it would be fun to make my own "conlang" which wasn't a conlang at all, because it was just English but I changed what the letters of the alphabet look like. Maybe just a font, then. The trees on Rain's lower sleeves are actually the letter R, I believe. If you look closely, you can see it in the background, too. The background is just "Rain February Pulster" repeated in that font over and over again.
The fullbody has its hair fully green, but the headshot below has just a streak of green on the front hair-part, while keeping the rest of it blue. In a later drawing from the same month, I solidified the concept: I removed the big, bushy hair and the ear scars, but kept the streak of green and the outfit.
My NaNoWriMo novel kind of sucked, if you wanted to know, but I still reference it to this day because while the plot was less-than-solid, the one-liners were killer.
On March 10, 2024, almost exactly two years after it was created, Rain got a third reference sheet. Xer older and younger versions coexisted, and served different roles. The older version's jacket has been drastically simplified; the letter R on the sleeves was removed because I found it too much of a hassle, and also I never used that alternate alphabet for anything else anyway. Also, now Rain's a lesbian, I guess.
I want to point out Rain's fur color here. If you didn't notice, it's been slowly getting darker and more saturated. As I didn't colorpick anything back then, I'm fairly certain this was accidental. I guess I was just more drawn to a more saturated, in-your-face Rain over the years.
(Fig. 5) Rain's third reference sheet.
And that's basically where Rain's development ends. I haven't really done anything new with Rain since 2024. You can see its final reference above; I removed the bag because I don't really draw it, and Rain's older version became its main version.
