So… yeah. The furries. Bosda identifies as an anthrofan, and Enola Straight as a casual fan (or at least they did back in late '02), but that’s only the surface. Get much deeper and suddenly you hit the Untouchables of the Internet. No matter how low you go, you can always think “Well, at least I get more respect than the furries.” Part of it is that every fetish it comes across gets tarballed in and finds a niche, and people will vigorously defend them. There’s furry pedophilia (“cub art”) and furry scat, furry unbirthing and furry vore (being eaten, either intact or shredded). Pet (ahem) lovers. Plush fetishists. Otherkin. Inflation. Those are the (relatively) common ones. And no matter what, there’s more emo drama than the rest of the Internet put together.
That said, it was a pretty cool little community to hang around in for a while. They have a great creative attitude, even if most of them aren’t very good (Sturgeon’s Law, oh well). There’s a lot of free, easily accessible porn, which was rather important when I was 14 and not too good at getting anything else. They seem to genuinely care about each other, and for the most part they accept each other unconditionally. I haven’t met a more contributive sort of subculture.
I kicked around for a good five years and loose change. I was serious about it for probably the middle three. Saw a lot of stuff, met a lot of people. I went to two cons. I gave some small contributions. I took some influence out. I had some slack cut for me and cut a lot back. Two years and change ago, I left. Mostly I’m better now.
I’ll try to answer everything as best I can. Any takers?
Oh God, the plot thickens. I was about to link to a pic of the jacket to the Promise Rings Nothing Feels Good which has a picture of a “tilt-a-whirl” type ride on it where you ride inside bears. Thus a joke about “emo” and “furries” was lost because I couldn’t find a pic.
Then I remembered the name of the ride. Bear Affair. Yes. Affair. With a Bear. :eek:
Otherkin are people who take the fannish practice of having avatars to an extreme. Instead of just representing themselves with cat-people/dog-people/dragons/etc, they believe that they are animals (or dragons, or actual furry-type creatures, or anythin) who were accidentally born into human bodies. In one case that I know of, someone believed that he actually was a dragon, but that ordinary people just couldn’t see him for what he was. I’m not entirely sure if he was for real or just a really awesome deadpan, but he seemed quite adamant about it.
Just for the record, this thread was inspired by [thread=368171]the Bizarre Fetishism thread.[/thread]
Unbirthing is the sexual fetishization of cramming someone back into a womb. Some people want to go back; some people want to put the size queens to shame. As I remember, there was an artist called “Mamabliss” who did a lot of unbirthing artwork, if you don’t want your eyes anymore.
So what does it mean to be an ex-fetishist – that you don’t have the fetish anymore, or you just don’t participate in the scene? In other words, what do you do with your time now?
I piggybacked on a Goon friend’s account for a few days once, and yeah, I know what you’re saying. They don’t seem to be all that bad if you can laugh at yourself. I think part of it is that furries (for the most part) take themselves really seriously. I’ve thought about joining up now and again; as an ex-furry I find it even more amusing.
The feeling is mutual, incidentally. Furries have a serious persecution (some of them call it “fursecution” but I call these people subliterates) complex, which only fuels the fire. The worst of them make Scientologists look good-humored. Like I said, they take it really seriously.
I had a boyfriend who wanted to dress me up in a cat outfit. I thought it sounded like fun, but the relationship was long-distance, and we broke up before we could try it.
Anyway, I’m interested in how you got involved with furries in the first place, what attracted you to them, and why you left. Also, you said, “Mostly I’m better now.” Did/do you feel that there was something unhealthy about being a furry? Oh, and the obvious one: so what animal or character were you?
I must confess as well: I like furries. I have a certain amount of respect for them.
I draw a furry character from time to time (I have versions of me as a dog, cat, and bunny - ahh, how typical - and various Pokemon too), but I’m not into the sexual stuff and I can’t roleplay to save my life. Any anthro art I draw is fully clothed, too.
I was going to ask why you left, as well, and do you still consider yourself a fan at all? I know “fan” isn’t exactly the right word here, but I can’t think of a better one.
I got into the furry thing by accident, right after I first got Internet access. I decided that I would like to know more of the world, so I would read all of Usenet. Every group, for at least a few days, to see what was up. I wandered into a furry group right around the time a particularly good artist posted a small flood of porn. When you’re a horny 14-year-old boy, this is very convincing, and I decided to stick around until it got boring.
It doesn’t do much for me. It actually stopped being exciting around the time I met my second girlfriend (my first was actually another furry-fan… I have no idea whether she’s still in it, having not spoken to her in four years), but I had a lot of friends in the fandom and I hung around just for the people for another year.
They’re amusing, but that’s it. I was never really attracted to the costumes (“fursuits”), only the art. I still do find anime-styled catgirls magically attractive, but anything past about an FFXI Mithra is just… meh. Whatever.
I hang around casually with anime-types, who are probably the second most contributive subculture around, but that’s it for major subculture involvements. I’m getting into music nerdery, but not really as a social thing.
I didn’t have any costumes, though online I played a cat-human. He was a very distinctive one, so I’m not going to go into details too much. I did write a story once, and it even got published in a fairly respectable 'zine. I also maintained a FAQ for a couple years.
You know, when I was in high school I was into a lot of RP online. One excursion when my normal realms of roleplay were quiet, I went looking elsewhere and stumbled across Furcadia.
Furcadia might be called the first MMORPG, or one of the first. In terms of MMO, it is extremely dated - but it lives on. It’s a chat environment with furry avatars and such. That was my first introduction to the furry world. I never delved much further than that, though I ended up learning just all the weird fetishes they had.
I moved on fairly quickly, so my experience is hardly able to be considered even tangential… But I will say this, I echo the line about the dedication of some people.
