i have this problem where i have horse racing autism, and everyone is getting into it thanks to uma musume becoming popular, but i only know french horses. because i'm french. so today i decided to be the change i wanna see in the world and turn ourasi into a cute horse girl. design notes under the cut!!
one thing i obviously ran into is ourasi is a trotter, and specifically ran harness. to adapt the idea of harness racing, i gave her a chest harness and a corset- my idea was to mirror the physical restriction a harness puts on a horse. this obviously ends up making it look like a kink thing but like, honestly that's just how french people are you know ?
her shoes are flat ! in uma musume the heeled shoes are justified as a "it gives them more power" thing, but pure power isn't as much of a concern for trotters. the nature of the restricted movement in this in-universe adaptation of harness racing also made me think endurance is much more of a concern, and so i decided a way to differentiate trotters from galloping horses would be that they run with flat shoes.
due to ourasi being nicknamed "the lazy king" i gave her a cartoon crown ornament. i played around with the idea of giving her a bigger one but at that time i had already decided to give her a big hoodie so she'd look comfy, and it was clashing with the themeing. plus i didn't wanna step on tm opera o's hooves.
the white leg warmers are both a reference to the hoof guards worn in harness, and how ourasi had white socks on his hind legs. additionally the white cuffs on her hoodie also serve as a mirror to the braces harness horses wear.
personality wise, i imagine her as an unwilling genius type. ourasi was a famously difficult horse, said to "only get interested in competition a few hundred metres before the finish line", but he was also known as the horse of the century. he had very few offsprings and none of them were particularly good at racing, he was just built different. so i don't think she really enjoys racing ! in my mind she's doing it to make her first trainer proud, and quietly retires to the countryside once she starts falling off- if she isn't the best anymore, then she can start focusing on her real passions.
on that note, ourasi was born in nowhere, middleof and his real life first handler was deaf-mute. i thought it would be interesting to incorporate that history in her design, as her relative isolation would mean she would have spent the first few years of her life largely not speaking. also because i know a bit of LSF and i wanted to. she's not non-verbal, but has a harder time communicating in that way compared to signing.
[this page is a collage of packaging from all the oral medications i currently take : alprazolam, levothyroxine, ritalin, sertraline, hydroxyzine, naproxen sodium, paracetamol, clonazepam, estradiol]
