Meet the Grump
This is a post I originally wrote for Cohost in 2023. It has been revised ever so slightly to clean up a few typos and to fit it into this new context, but otherwise I've kept it intact.
Art by Mag Ferret
In honour of my kangaroo character Berninger's "birthday" around this time of May (i.e. the day I picked him up from the fursuit maker - 14th May specifically), I felt like resurrecting my old post about the history of the big orange roo. Flint is my primary form of identification online but he's not actually that fascinating to chat in detail about because he's pretty much just me but in the form of a dorky fox, there's no elaborate backstory or history; even his name is literally just something that popped in my head when I was thinking about a fursona and I just went along with it. Berninger, meanwhile, was someone who was designed, a character that came into this world with a mission and who's separate enough about me-prime that over the course of time he's further developed as an individual personality. A lot of this never gets spoken about unless someone directly asks me about it so he's largely just been a big orange mystery, but I think he deserves a spotlight shone onto him for a change.
So, I want to dedicate some time to discuss my characteristically grumpy kangaroo and below we'll take a deep dive into his world and backstory.
History
The wider world became aware of Berninger in May 2016 when the fursuit debuted, but the idea of a big ol' cartoon kangaroo had been bouncing around my head like a DVD logo for a much longer time, slowly taking (pear) shape. The primary inspiration for Bernie has always been that, well, cartoon kangaroos are incredible. Always full of personality, coming in all kinds of funky shapes and sizes and almost always incredibly adorable - one of the best species to toon up. My personal favourite - and arguably the main reason for my fascination to begin with - was Splodge from Blinky Bill. Blinky Bill was an Australian cartoon featuring the titular koala and his friends adventuring in the Australian outback and it aired regularly in Finland when I was growing up, and I watched it regularly. There were a lot of great characters in the show (the shy dingo kid especially) but Splodge was love at first sight, with his instantly charming friend shape, his adorable cap and dungarees and (in the Finnish dub certainly) his gentle voice. If I imagined myself as any character in the show, it was Splodge. Naturally, when I started thinking about a separate kangaroo character many, many years later, he was the first reference point I had in my mind.
The second was the kangaroo mascot costume also pictured above, from FaceMakers Incorporated. I got into the furry fandom through fursuits, though before I knew that term I was searching around the internet for information about mascot costumes specifically. FaceMakers Inc was a site I happened to bump into while wildly googling for random things and its pages full of all kinds of incredible looking mascots (in the eyes of a young soon-to-be-furry weirdo anyway) kept me captivated for ages and fuelled endless amounts of inspiration. Out of everything on that site, it was this particular kangaroo that caught my eye the most. Berninger was always designed with a fursuit version in mind, and the key inspiration I had for it was just how perfectly that mascot roo from FaceMakers hid the human shape inside. Viewed in today's standards it doesn't look anything too fancy, but at the time the shaping of it was very unusually well done compared to pretty much everything else you could find online at the time. Upon seeing that costume I knew - a big walking cartoon kangaroo, that's what I wanted to be.
(sidenote: while Berninger is B I G and decidedly so, the size in itself was never really a factor in the character for me. I simply wanted a roo shape that would hide the human shape as much as possible through an exaggerated cartoon physique, and so that naturally lead to the character becoming bigger. But it is hilarious how he gets stuck in doorways)
Okay, so I wanted a toon 'roo - what's he going to be like then?
Early sketches by Will Mofield
As mentioned in the intro, I did actually spend time designing what Berninger would be like. That is, I approached h his creation with a vague plan in mind and with an analytical process where I thought about my end goals and how they'd be best represented. Flint's final look was haphazardly designed in stages over the course of my first few years in the fandom with a lot of trial and error, where only the fittest design decisions survived (there was a brief phase where he regularly wore an Aussie outback hat which history has mercifully buried under the sands of time). Meanwhile, Bernie coming together was based around actual intentional decisions in most parts. And so we can break down all these decisions per the below:
- Colour: Flint was originally a lot more obviously orange but I kind of chickened out and toned his fur colour down in the early days of the character's existence, thinking that bright orange might be a little too garish if/when he'd get a fursuit made out of him. As a result of my sins, I now get to hear people call him a brown fox all the time. Berninger was my redemption arc, he'd be as in-your-face vivid orange as you could possibly get, to fix what I once broke. The blue nose was just applying the classic 'blorange' design palette - it's a cliché for a reason, it's a great contrast!
- The schnozz: Speaking of the snout, it's become a bit of a trademark of Bern's and it was largely inspired by his overall shape and size, to have something match the rest of the proportions. This is actually something that got even more emphasised when the fursuit process started, it wasn't quite as focal in the original concepts. But it worked so well for the character and when I saw the first designs of the nose in the suit, I fell in love with my own character even more than I had before.
- The grump: The late 2010s saw a trend of grumpy characters suddenly appearing all over the fandom and whilst no one probably believed me at the time, the decision to make Bernie a bundle of mild annoyance long pre-dates that trend; between Berninger's first proper designs and the suit having been finalised, a whole new trend had come to life that I inadvertently fell in line with. I thought the grumpiness would be a fun way of setting his personality apart from Flint's irrational exuberance - and the actual real life inspiration behind it was my resting bitch face and how people always kept thinking I'm annoyed. I thought if everyone thinks I'm being grumpy all the time, well, let's just turn that into a character.
- The name: The name is the hardest part of any character for me (this is why I tend to just name every single RPG character of mine "Fox" so I don't have to spend ages in the character creation screen), and Berninger's eventual moniker came through a long series of word association. Originally I went with alliteration, starting with K-names to go with "kangaroo" but soon expanding to Rs (for "roo"). I went through a bunch of different ideas but one that stuck for a while was "Rylan": a name that came to me from the title of a song that one of my favourite bands, The National, had been playing live on-and-off around the time (the song "Rylan" wouldn't see a studio release until 2021 but had been hanging around for a good decade before it). I don't think it quite suited the vague notion I had of the character though, but... The National's lead singer is Matt Berninger. That surname felt right - it was unique, and somehow befit the idea of the character. And thus, the roo was officially christened as such.
I want to give a special shout out here for Will Mofield whose initial sketches I have included above. Will is a wonderful treasure of a friend and kindly agreed to help me out with the initial design phase because I needed something visual in front of me to really iron out how I wanted the character to look. Will spent time doodling on livestreams with me and fleshing out the visual details, eventually creating the final fursuit reference as well - without his talent, Bern wouldn't be the same.
In the years since his initial appearance, Berninger has adopted a Hanna Barbera style collar as his one and only fashion accessory. This was a design element that appeared in a specific HB-style commission, and I liked it so much that I've now integrated it into his main design. Still need to get it as a fursuit accessory though. And speaking of which...
The fursuit
The Berninger fursuit was done by FluffStorm, who were my first pick for making the character come to life; they had been doing a number of proportionally exaggerated toony suits in the UK around the time I started seriously shopping for suitmakers, and they felt like the perfect match for what I wanted out of the character. And they were - through a combination of inspiration and crazy genius engineering, Berninger came to life in the most wonderful way possible.
Fun fact! That vivid orange fur is literally all of that fur that was available at the time. After locating the fur, it was realised that there was a very limited supply of it left around and that no more would be in production afterwards. Because the fur was so perfect for the project, FluffStorm scooped up every single piece they could get, and so Berninger stands as a masterclass example of cunning ways to utilise every little scrap of fur and not wasting one iota. Once the fursuit had finished, there were more or less no excess scraps of fur left - everything that was available was used for the roo.
Suiting as Berninger is incredibly exhausting given all the padding, but it's incredibly fun. He literally turns people's heads with his sheer presence, this gigantic cartoon kangaroo walking down hallways far smaller than him. He's produced some incredibly fun reactions over the years - special shoutout to the MFF housekeeping lady who, upon seeing me waddling down the hallway, shouted "shake what your momma gave ya!" after me (and I did shake it for her). Compared to Flint he's much less agile but just his presence allows for fun interactions; he's definitely more of a character-character that I reserve specific time for rather than the more casually approachable Flint, but that's what makes Bernie such a fun personality to inhibit. It's a whole different world to Flint and it's a blast.
One of the surprise extras that the fursuit came with was that his perturbed eyebrows are fully removable (before this was a regular occurrence in fursuits), so that Bern can "break character" and be a genuine happy-go-lucky toon roo if wanted. I tend to reserve the appearance of Happy!Bern for the last time I suit as him during a convention - because of course Berninger is excited that he gets to leave this crowded place full of people bothering him!
Accrued lore
An average work day... Art by Will Mofield
I didn't set out to give Berninger any kind of a real background. At the end of the day he was an off-shoot extension of my whims and I didn't really see the need to give him an official 'story' or anything like that - it just isn't something that is in my personality (but I have the utmost respect and awe to anyone who's spent the time and imagination to create a full on lore bible to come with their character). That said, across the years there's been some random quips or ad hoc thought exercises - usually in the build up to a joke - around Bern that have ended up having a surprising amount of staying power in my head. Enough so that as they've bubbled in my noggin, they've formed a sort of an unofficial pseudo canon around Bern - nothing too elaborate, but amusing (to me) tidbits of lore and flavour that expand a little on his own personality and have helped to flesh him out a bit more in artwork and elsewhere.
A run-through of some of the highlights that have been developed over the years include:
- Bern studied at the Acme Tooniversity, like most cartoon animals. To fund his studies and life around them, he took on a basic data entry job at a Very Normal Boring Company. He has (metaphorically, but sometimes literally too) got stuck in that job following his graduation and for reasons unknown, stays employed at this rote and completely ordinary day job - maybe it's loyalty, maybe it's peaceful. He's a big bright cartoon kangaroo in a sea of Daves from Accounting and Stephanies from HR.
- Important fact: Bernie isn't a misanthrope. He just values quiet and peace, and getting on with his own things without everyone and everything else getting in the way. His grumpiness isn't anger, it's the quiet frustration at someone's shopping trolley blocking the center of the aisle, at the car ahead of you going just a touch too slow, of your chocolate bar getting stuck in the vending machine and seeing the next person getting two for the price of one. He's just a big cuddly lug who wants to go about his day without too much fuss - shame he's a massive cartoon kangaroo who can't help but pull attention around him. If he does ever get physical, it's entirely for comedic reasons and only with other toons - those old Tooniversity courses on physical comedy are still there in the back of his mind and he doesn't mind indulging in old habits now and then.
- For all that he is a big grump, Bernie does have his own interests that make him, if not happy then content (even if he's not too keen to show it). The big one is that he is a bit of a foodie and in his spare time he's an amateur gourmet cook, happy to spend his free days toiling away in his kitchen, trying to replicate the posh fine dining dishes he's seen on the TV or in the menus of Michelin-starred restaurants. He's by no means a professional - but he's the kind of a home chef who always has a set of tweezers at hand to align the micro herbs just right.
- Bern is reluctant best friends with Flint. Or rather, for some reason Flint clung onto his company and after a period of trying his best to avoid the overly energetic fox, Bern has gotten used to his presence. Secretly Bern doesn't mind having someone to occasionally hang out with even if Flint is a bit too much at times; which Flint is very aware of and thus keeps hanging out with him.
Art by Sancoon/Snoutywolf
I'm going to admit that this entry came out a little longer than I expected - but thank you for reading and letting me indulge into the background of this character who may not always get the first billing in my adventures around this fandom and online, but who means a lot to me. Berninger represents one dream - one tick in the bucket list - having come true and he's special for that. He's a very situational character because he is so heavily defined in style and personality, but it's very fun to sometimes inhabit this wholly different vibe. I know there are people who prefer Bern over Flint - and fair play to you - and so I hope those who fall into that crowd have found the above a fun read. And the rest, well, now you know more about how my brain works I guess.
So cheers to the grumpy boy, the big space hopper who steals our hearts and knocks down our vases.
Art by Will Mofield
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