kajarainbow | Ramblings on the nature of my association with the furry fandom

Hmm! I was thinking on this today. In the past, I didn't want to apply the "furry" label to myself. This has nothing to do with the particular stereotypes the mainstream seems to hold toward furries when they even have any awareness of that particular subculture. This has nothing to do with the netbastards who seem to like dissing people just for being furries.

Rather, it is that "furry" seems to have particular connotations that I don't feel necessarily describe me, the term seems strongly connected to a particular fandom, a group of people that know each other. I've seen people apply the term "furry" to works not stemming out of that particular fandom, and while the term is technically correct if you define "furry" as anything involving non-human animals that've been anthromorphized in some manner, the word has the connotation of being associated with that specific fandom, so it doesn't feel quite right.

And, yet, I have a strong connection with this fandom. Hmm. A lot of the things I read on the Internet come from people who've had some contact with the fandom. A number of comics, some Livejournals, and I'm currently playing on a MUCK heavily (if not necessarily completely) populated with some of the more interestingly weird, cool members of this fandom. And, I realize something. For some completely random reason, I'm predisposed to like this stuff. And that's just cool.

So, I'm a furry! But... I don't seem to have much interest in most of the furry webcomics out there. The most popular (from my guess) things I read are Badly Drawn Kitties, Jack, and Freefall. Sabrina, Kevin and Kell, generally most of the 'furry favorites' out there, don't really appeal to me. I'm losing interest in FurryMUCK, especially now that I have the new weird and cool Puzzlebox MUCK to interest me, where a sentient singularity can call an ever-shifting spider-like thing 'sister', and neither of those two characters are out of place. You could easily call me a furry fan, and the label would stick, but you could also call me a fringe furry fan, and that would stick, too. This is, I suspect, why I haven't been eager to adopt the former label, most of the people who fall under it don't seem to be that much like me.

So. I've noticed that some furry webcomics manage to be massively popular despite my considering them utter dreck, while some others I like better seem smaller in fanbase. This suggests that a lot more people have quite different tolerances than me than have tolerances like me. Likewise, most of the furry-related LiveJournals on my friends list are of weird members of the fandom.

So, yeah, I'm a furry! But all this means is that I rather like anthromorphized animals, there's too much variety in the 'furry' thing to really say much more than that. Some tendencies, yes, but hardly universals or even many commonplaces! Part of the whole thing is that furry is less a genre per se than a subject matter that offers possibilities not quite the same as similar works involving pure humans!

Currently, I have a concept for a story involving anthromorphized animals, but this has very little in common with most of the creative output of the furry fandom. It seems to be an almost mythological story involving an intersexed antro wild cat who later gets hailed as a god. It also features anatomically correct antro female spotted hyenas and societies shaped by the interesting social quirks of real spotted hyenas and meerkats and such.. If I called this story furry, it would likely cause expectations utterly unlike what the story would be.

Ramblings on the nature of my association with the furry fandom

no subject