Sam probably has the lowest prey drive of any fox that I draw in the forest, and they also are probably the most self-conscious about it.
Sam being nonbinary/agender in many ways mirrors their relationship with themself as a predator. Sam doesn't have anxiety about being a fox, they don't have anxiety about their physical body, or even their instincts. It's not that Sam thinks of themself as prey. It's more this desire to not be part of the classification at all. Sam doesn't want the bunnies around them to think about them as predator or prey. They want bunnies to think of them as.. Sam. And they're running headfirst into the fact that everything about the forest makes that incredibly difficult.
I don't think Sam has anything close to the words to express that though, and even thinking about it makes them uncomfortable.
Sam is constantly hyper-aware of the fact that they are a fox. It's part of why they're so good at body language, and it's part of why they're so good at getting bunnies to trust them and why they're so good at communicating with prey. They're realistic about how bunnies see them, and they're constantly tuning microexpressions and thinking about how they present. It is genuinely one of Sam's best qualities, and its something that is going to come up again and again when they appear in comics: Sam is *good at this.* Sam is the fox you talk to when you want a fox that will treat you like an equal, who will make the effort to understand how you feel. Sam is good with prey.
But that's also one of their flaws. I've talked before about different foxes in the forest being foils for each other, and usually when I talk about it, I'm comparing and contrasting a pred like Mal (a fatal fox) with a pred like Vicky or Sadie (safe foxes that still tease prey). But I think Sam's foil is Swallow. Swallow is instinct, Sam is self-control. Swallow can't communicate and is always authentically himself. Sam is an expert at communication, and is always masking/fronting. Sam is anxiety, and self-doubt, and the vague discomfort that never quite grows big enough to treat as serious, but just always lurks a little bit below the surface like an itch that can't be scratched.
There are too many confusing thoughts inside Sam's head that are too uncomfortable for them to think about, and it prevents them from ever really vocalizing what they *WANT* out of a relationship with prey. Pebble showing some real insight here, she knows what to say to Sam to break them out of this particular spiral for right now: "I'm not scared of you."
I think some (definitely not all, but some) of Sam's motivation for being around bunnies, and for spending so much time being helpful to them, and for hyper-fixating on how they present is to get bunnies to regularly say that, maybe not vocally, but in the way that they act. <3
There's more to it than that (mice aren't scared of Sam at all, and Sam still has a complicated relationship with them X3), but it's big part of how I write their character. I definitely want to dig into more of Sam's hangups and motivations and stuff in the future too: it's a lot of different things that Sam themself wouldn't really know how to put into words - but that hopefully they'll get to explore more over time <3
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This comic was meant to be a supporter doodle! SleepingKitsune asked for a scene of Sam and a bunny typically interacting, but it got a bit longer and turned into an interesting opportunity for me to explore a part of Sam's personality that I haven't gotten to show very often.
Want to see art early? I have a Subscribestar at https://subscribestar.adult/foxyoreos where you can get weekly access to early art or request monthly doodles! <3
