Sabertooth Tiger fursuit; wearing it makes you feel strong, but it's a coin toss if you got the one that actually makes you stronger or not
Perceived strength vs actual strength is a really interesting dynamic. For example, wearing work gloves doesn’t make your muscles any stronger, but you suddenly feel capable of lifting/handling certain heavier things because your hands are protected. If you try to carry something that’s too heavy, it can hurt you… but so can trying to carry something that’s a manageable amount of heavy in conjunction with being rough or abrasive or sharp or whatever. Wearing work gloves protects you from the latter, but it still feels like “I can carry heavy things that I couldn’t before.”
I think it’d be even more interesting if the one that actually makes you stronger doesn’t make you “feel strong” like the other one does. It’d make it so you’d wonder, “Is this even the one that actually makes me stronger?” The one that only affects perceived strength could theoretically outperform the one that actually grants strength by confidence alone, though perhaps it’d be dangerous for the wearer to push themself past their actual capabilities so much.
Oh yeah they’re fursuits! Fursuits are cool. Big cats are cool. I just think the perceived strength thing is really neat so this post was mostly about that.