good question, i don't know!
okok that guy is my fursona. does xe count as a furry if he isn't a real animal and rather some shapeshifting... alien(?) ??? the existence of protogens makes me think yes, although i usually end up referring to her as just my 'sona' anyway because it's faster to type.
now. if you ask me what his name is. i do not have an answer for you. that thing has gone through so many different names, first there was no name at all, then it was strix, then it was nox, at some point it was noctys, then it went back to nox, then i gave up on giving her a name, then it was strix again, then stella, then it was nox/noctys and stella/strix as two separate entities that make up one being (that was.... an interesting time for me), now he's just one being again with no name and if anything i'll refer to her as any of those names at random or literally just as my sona. for convenience i'll call him strix here.
i've had zir for years at this point. i created xem in january of 2022, so i'd say it's been... hold on i suck at math... around 33 months/almost three whole years, although it's felt like way more. i've made other sonas before and after the creation of strix, but none have been used as consistently as xem. she's evolved alongside me, and there's so many different versions of zir.
this was the original drawing, next to a drawing from last year, and next to the drawing on my homepage which at this point in time (october 2024) is the most recent drawing i've made.
as you can see, they all look pretty different but like, the same concept is there. except whatever happened in that middle one was pretty odd. i don't perfectly remember what my mental state was like at the time but i know something was for sure wrong when i started drawing my sona as two creatures. not sure why exactly those two things were correlated but i know they were.
anyway my explanation for the design changing so drastically over time and me drawing her inconsistently is that he's a shapeshifting creature from outer space. however. if i had to make xem be any specific real life animal. it would be a linsang because of their triangular looking heads.
also some additional design history:
the original design was a creature that was on all four legs, had massive ears, a devil-like tail, a bunch of fur around the neck, horns facing upwards, a rounded triangle shaped head, and a tuft of hair on the top of the head.
in the same year that she was created, the design changed to a either bipedal or quadrupedal creature depending on the context, no ears, an devil-like tail with the tail itself being a thin line, again a bunch of fur around the neck, one horn facing up while the other faced down, a significantly more triangular head, devil wings, and slightly bigger hair.
last year before the split incident it changed to a bipedal creature with again no ears, same tail, less fur around the neck but it was still more than the rest of the body, one horn up and one horn down, an even more triangular head, a large amount of hair on one half of the face, and a devil and angel wing.
during the split incident it pretty much stayed the same except each half of the design became its own thing, so one was more of a devil and the other was more of an angel.
now i draw him more like last year before the incident, except most recently i drew her more alien-like cuz i thought it would match the website. i guess what happened over time was the neck fur shrank, the head became more triangular, and the hair grew and shifted to the side.