Not his real name. Voss is a trans Javanese Green Peacock, another one of the twelve members of the ensemble cast of Aberdork United.
When I was originally institutionalized for a mental health breakdown in 2012, I was in the hospital ward with a sketchpad and managed to acquire a copy of the RSPB's magazine. Just using it as reference to doodle up new characters, when I was released Voss for the first few years of my Vosyl handle came to represent me in the fandom as my fursona. A supposed replacement for Rachel, whom I'd ultimately go back to.
They were always an odd-fit for me, I had wanted Aberdork to be diverse with many people coming together from all walks of life, with no character really taking centre stage. In conversations and essays read by many people of colour on representation, they gave me a lot of thought towards race and ethnicity and how I might depict that in an presumed anthro setting.
That is to say, if I was making Voss today, I wouldn't have made him the same as I did back then.
I was at the time, really into philosophy, western literature, and the violin and those tastes reflected in Voss as making him akin to a europhile (Despite the world of Aberdork is completely different, no extanct nation in our world exists in theirs). I had this brown blazer with padded elbows I'd wear to look more intellectual. An embarassing era for me to recall, but I didn't want to go to college looking like I was sleeping at a homeless shelter. I wanted to look like someone who was still in higher education, at a proper university, critically engaged with high culture. I even wore a pocketwatch. I wanted to look 'sophisticated' by European standards.
At a more base level: I had a 'thing' for albino characters back then, but I grew out of it and became less afraid of working with colour. Rachel, Julian, and Voss were all originally white but I only ever thought of Rachel as being ethnically white, Julian is mixed, and Voss right from the start I should've thought as Southeast Asian. I'd later change him as having vitiligo, retaining some colour in his design. Julian would become piebald with notable black colouration on his back, eye, and hair. Rachel would remain unchanged, except for her hairstyle, which has been dyed every colour of the rainbow at this point.
If Voss was made today, I'd write him more explicitly rooted as a PoC and not as a stand-in for my trashy (past) europhilia, I'd get out my own box and go do my research thoroughly as I had been doing over the years about how his background would make him, him. I don't like any of the images I attached to this post, I don't think they really get his identity down, but I'm also glad at having made them. They're pieces i can use to self-reflect and critique, and steer myself to better representation.
There is always going to be some part of you, you pour into your OC. That's unavoidable, but for Voss, for him to work, he needs less me.