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A public mocking.
15 years ago
I wanted to post this earlier in the week but between getting over the crud and helping Smudge get over it to I have been kind of busy.
I want to tell a little story to you, some of you may have already heard it, of a little moment I had in the Art Show at FC and the question it raised in my head. Oh, and if you just happen to watch me on FA but didn't realize who I was. To mock you and your bro publicly.
I was in the Art Show checking bids on my work and I decided to take a wander around the show. I decided to take a closer look at
Kacey work in show. In particular I wanted to look at http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2376684/ Operation Cupcake again.
As I arrived there were these two fellows who I never got a chance read their name badges also looking at Kacey's work. As I was standing behind them I heard one of them say "I know she's popular and all, but I don't see why people get all excited about her work?" At this point I commented that I thought it was because of her excellent composition, technique, personality, and overall commitment to the arts that people found appealing. One of the two turned around looked me up and down and then sneering at me said "What do you know you're not a furry!" and then him and his bro quickly left.
Now ten years ago that might have really gotten my hackles up, but I'm older and I like to think wiser so I didn't even bother replying to their little snarky comment. I will now say that they were a couple idiots and should learn to think before they engage their mouths, but it did get me thinking.
Since my first days in the fandom one of the reoccurring topics that comes up ever few years is "What does it mean to be a furry?" Often it is done to try and lump, and then disclaim, certain members of the genre as being more or less "furry" than some other group. At different points various self-appointed leaders, prophets, artists, messiahs, and general power freaks have tried to claim that their version was the "True Fur" They cause a ruckus for awhile and forums, cons, and mucks are abuzz with people choosing up sides and sharpening axes. Eventually though they are forgotten and genre goes along its merry way.
I'm uncertain why these two chaps would not consider me a furry? It maybe that I was at least ten years older than them? It could the fact that I didn't have the appropriate wardrobe? I was in an overcoat, shirt and slacks and could've passed for a businessman in the hotel lobby. I definitely did not have the ears, tail, and fuzzy paw slippers that they wearing, but I don't consider clothes a vote one way or another. Maybe I just didn't radiate furriness, whatever that is, to them?
I've been in the genre since 1989. I have been in dozens of furry art shows. Produced hundreds of pieces of art on the subject. Have spoken on dozens of panels, and have been a GoH at FC 2007. I helped run a company that was heavily committed to the genre for almost ten years. When I sleep I dream of anthropomorphc individuals. In my book I'm a furry, but how do you my watchers consider and define yourself. I do not believe there is one answer to this question.
I want to tell a little story to you, some of you may have already heard it, of a little moment I had in the Art Show at FC and the question it raised in my head. Oh, and if you just happen to watch me on FA but didn't realize who I was. To mock you and your bro publicly.
I was in the Art Show checking bids on my work and I decided to take a wander around the show. I decided to take a closer look at
Kacey work in show. In particular I wanted to look at http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2376684/ Operation Cupcake again. As I arrived there were these two fellows who I never got a chance read their name badges also looking at Kacey's work. As I was standing behind them I heard one of them say "I know she's popular and all, but I don't see why people get all excited about her work?" At this point I commented that I thought it was because of her excellent composition, technique, personality, and overall commitment to the arts that people found appealing. One of the two turned around looked me up and down and then sneering at me said "What do you know you're not a furry!" and then him and his bro quickly left.
Now ten years ago that might have really gotten my hackles up, but I'm older and I like to think wiser so I didn't even bother replying to their little snarky comment. I will now say that they were a couple idiots and should learn to think before they engage their mouths, but it did get me thinking.
Since my first days in the fandom one of the reoccurring topics that comes up ever few years is "What does it mean to be a furry?" Often it is done to try and lump, and then disclaim, certain members of the genre as being more or less "furry" than some other group. At different points various self-appointed leaders, prophets, artists, messiahs, and general power freaks have tried to claim that their version was the "True Fur" They cause a ruckus for awhile and forums, cons, and mucks are abuzz with people choosing up sides and sharpening axes. Eventually though they are forgotten and genre goes along its merry way.
I'm uncertain why these two chaps would not consider me a furry? It maybe that I was at least ten years older than them? It could the fact that I didn't have the appropriate wardrobe? I was in an overcoat, shirt and slacks and could've passed for a businessman in the hotel lobby. I definitely did not have the ears, tail, and fuzzy paw slippers that they wearing, but I don't consider clothes a vote one way or another. Maybe I just didn't radiate furriness, whatever that is, to them?
I've been in the genre since 1989. I have been in dozens of furry art shows. Produced hundreds of pieces of art on the subject. Have spoken on dozens of panels, and have been a GoH at FC 2007. I helped run a company that was heavily committed to the genre for almost ten years. When I sleep I dream of anthropomorphc individuals. In my book I'm a furry, but how do you my watchers consider and define yourself. I do not believe there is one answer to this question.
As such there is no way to define the group outside enjoyment of anthropomorphic animals.
2. Her Art work is the best I had seen
3. I do not understand I think your a furry just like me.
4. Do not let them get to you.
And admired your work. I also agree with you on Kacey's work. You both do good stuff.
Also, Operation Cupcake is so freaking cute. I wish I could have bid on it.
In all seriousness though, I don't think there's any real, concrete definition of what a furry individual is. It's vast, it's unknowable, and cannot be defined, only experienced...or something like that.
Consult your Family priest if you sprout horns and a Tail and start offering contracts to people for their souls.
I'd consider you a furry, just because of your very furry imagination- Your dreams, etc. :)
Anyhoo...
d.m.f.
PS: Kacey's art wins through its personality and "heart" so you nailed that one.
The kits look at the older folks and if we say or do something that doesn't click with their beliefs they get all puffy and start getting all loud and such.
At which point i'd love to punch them in the throat. But I don't do that because I don't want to start shit..
Just because I am not young, wear ears, tail , bondage gear, mesh shirts and all that shit and wear just jeans and maybe a furry t-shirt I am not furry?
I have a fursuit ASSHOLE. There. That shut you up? Even if I didn't have a suit I was in this fandom and looking at art before you knew what furry WAS.
The young people in this fandom .. not saying all.. but quite a few.. need to fucking shut up and pay some more respect.. not just to the older people but to people in GENERAL.
Because I am getting SICK of it.
Johnny
"OMG U don't luv Kacey's super awesome artz! Fur hater!"
Now personally I love Kacey's work mostly for the color and details, they just blow me away. However one big thing that bugs me is how some people in this fandom yell "we want acceptance but I don't accept that!" so they want the world to accept diaper furs and pedo furs but if you say anything against a famous artist you're a Nazi.
Man, I would have loved to have been there to ask them, "So, Mr. Arbiter Of All Things Furry... What makes a person a fur? Hmmm?" and give them my patented shark grin. Like you, I'm an older critter, been into crazy costumes (didn't know they were called fursuits then) and anthro-type art since I was a kid. Been dragon-crazy for at least that long, anyway. But, I'm "new" to the Fandom itself, as Winnipeg was a bit of a backwater as far as that stuff was concerned. Heck, we didn't even get our science-fiction convention until I was fifteen in 1983...
To me, a Furry is anyone who defines themselves as a fur, specifically. Period. If YOU don't think of yourself as a Furry Fan or a Furry, then you just... ain't. Anything beyond that is just dressing.
The guy in the Armani suit who loves Bugs Bunny cartoons and watches them to relax after a day in the office calls himself a Furry? He's a Furry.
The mascot performer who loves both his job and his costumes calls himself a Furry? He's a Furry.
The kid who likes the porn and is getting into drawing it for himself calls himself a Furry? He's a Furry too.
The lady who makes her living at the Ren-faires as the Elf, the Dragon and the Satyr calls herself a Furry? She's a Furry.
The outside shit just doesn't frakkin' MATTER. A Furry is whatever that furry says it is... for THEM.
So, to the gits at the Art-show: "I'm a Furry, and I'm old enough to be your mother. Whatcha gonna do about it, punk?"
She's one of the best artists I've seen. That's not just among furries by a long shot.
I'd just love to see arguing over purity tests over who is a furry and who isn't. Are fursuiters or lifestylers or whatever more furry than those who aren't?
That got my usual mental "whatever" reaction. but for all I know they could have been the same two clowns you ran into as well.
When I first got into general sci-fi fandom in the late 1980s Bay Area conventions were a diverse collection of literature fans, media fans, anime fans, filkers, gamers, furries and all around interesting folks. Over the next decade I watched the various groups shatter into little Balkanized camps with their own criteria for what should be at the con. those who did not fit in were driven away.
First the furry then anime fans were shown the doors. Then the literature fans and media fans started staring at each other. The gamers always had their own conventions and wandered off. While the costumers and filkers started their own conventions like anime and furry fandom did.
Now it can be argued that this was a good thing since it allowed the individual genres to focus on specifically their topic. But I feel this also detrimental since each time you a group isolates itself from the larger population it creates a smaller group. This tends to create a certain amount of memes-inbreeding. It can get harder for new ideas and concepts to enter from outside the group. Also newcomers to a group may feel left on the outside.
Furry Fandom has remained fairly open to newcomers, and has made some real efforts over the last decade to extend the olive branch to other genres in the Bay Area. I am also pleased to see many of the furry artists incorporating style and design elements of other art movements into their work. This has led to an explosion of styles and qualitative jump in the nature of the art! Sorry if this is a long reply.
By their likely definition, I'm probably not a furry either. But hey... here I am!
I had a story somewhat like yours. It happed at least ten years ago when a few furries drove up from the U.S. East Coast to visit gawd knows who in Toronto. As well, they wanted to meet me and another local fan named Ken over dinner in one of the local Chinese restaurants.
The visitors were gay and heavily into bondage. That was okay with me and Ken, though both of use were straight enough to draw a line with. Dinner went okay, though it was somewhat memorable because the visitors were determined to put on a freak show. They all wore dog collars. At the end of the evening, as they were piling into their car, we all shook hands and made our goodbyes. One of them finally said that even though Ken and I weren't gay, we were "almost furry."
Say what?
I can remember at one MFF back when it was held in the same hotel as that army officer's conference some of the homosexual furs were deliberately hitting on the male officers in spite of knowing how the military feels about such things.
Although I can remember one officer (someone said he was a Lt. Colonel) who was loving the con, made sure to grab up bottles of champagne or wine from their dance to come down with his date and another couple to dance at the furry dance. Even had one moment I saw him pretending he had a tail and going 'I am tail here me roar!' and clearly enjoying himself.
We know not to judge people by their looks, but most of us (humans) do it dayly. A harsh comparison, but people still don't want to believe that the worst criminals can look good on the outside. Criminals have to be dirty, mean faces, unable to read and write and so on.
It's been 15 years for me now that I discovered Furry. I've seen the endless discussion what furry is supposed to be. The best definition I have found is still this poem. It's on one of the oldest furry site on the internet.
http://www.tigerden.com/poem.html
Furry
A poem by Croc O'Dile of TigerMUCK which captures a bit of what it is to be furry.
If the true meaning of furry you wish to understand
You must think in terms of paw and not hand
You must release your mentality from society's cage
For furry prefurs no race, sex, persuasion or age
You must sort through the hype and the exploitation
Because to be furry needs no justification
It is to reach out and embrace the unknown
To be surrounded by friends and yet still be alone
It is not a gimmick or a political movement
It's nothing so pretentious as a method of improvement
It's only to seek solace in the presence of friends
For when one is furry, the search never ends
It is sometimes to be controlled by one's emotions
It is to often be unsure of depths of devotion
It is the sweet pain of impossible dreams
It is never quite as close or as far as it seems
It is feelings being known without words being spoken
It is the inevitable occasional heart being broken
It is the type of love that now seems cliche
It's experience gained from having learned the hard way
It's a smurgle, a fuzzle, a rumble or purr
It's scales and whiskers and tails and fur
It's what we are, not outside but within
It's the binding force that makes us all kin
It's a howl in greeting to friends held dear
It's a bristling growl when confronted by fear
It's a friendly lick or scritch to show that we care
It's a deep understanding, a compassion that's rare
If what it is to be furry you still don't comprehend
Then consider this advice, my curious friend
If you're willing to respect that which you don't understand
Then come take my paw and I'll take your hand.
-- Croc O'Dile w/help from Tony DeMatio - 6/95
You don't have to justify it, just do it.
Frank Zappa said "whatever your into is far-out as long as it doesn't cause a muder"
We don't have to agree on what each other reads into it.
In the meantime consider this:
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men,
I will find something in them which will hang him.
Cardinal Richelieu
I do grow a little nostalgic however, time to get the old American Journals of Anthropomorphics out again. *sigh*
I watch you because at the con I met you at, (I can't remember what it was) you and Smudge were at the same table, and you were talking about Wing Effect vehicles, and had shown me the Caspian Sea Monster.
I love odd tech, so I a was hooked. I watch to see what you will do next. and I watch Smudge because of that Bunny that looks so innocent and yet has more wisdom than many others I see. Some of May's lines "Write themselves" but make her look strong as a bull behind that bunny's face.
Of course, if it'd been me encountering them, I could have pointed to my face (beard) and the backs of my hands / arms (plenty) and asked them what dictionary they read recently.
2. She's pretty good at characterization, too.
3. Huh, and here I thought furry was pretty much an incredibly broad definition, and pretty much self-defined, too. Like there's this girl I know who had a lioness-persona in a LARP for years, has animal and anthro art all over the place, and she meows at her nice (definitely involved with the fandom) boyfriend, and yet she insists she's Not A Furry. And if that isn't, then really the only person who decides if you are or aren't is yourself.
I have absolutely no idea how you could tell if someone was a fur by sight alone. That's one heck of an impressive (and apparently out-of-alignment) skill that they must possess. I remember the first fur-meet I tried to attend, and I remember sitting for a half hour in nervous anxiety of not knowing anyone, and not knowing what a fur looked like, eyeing up any groups of people and trying to listen in for any identifying conversations.
I do NOT scream furry IRL... even if I'm doodling away at a coffee shop and some random person comes over to curiously ask me what I'm working on, I get the label cartoonist far before any subject of furry comes up. I honestly prefer that, because when furry does come up, often so do all the awkward questions, and I really don't like the concept of me being a spokesperson. I can speak for myself all I want, but not for the fandom beyond general group answers.
Sure, at a con I wear a tail so its a lot easier to tell I'm a fur by sight but that's because I made it, and I'm proud of that!
The Definition of 'Furry' has changed so many times and gotten just so narrow of late that I stopped considering myself furry years ago. My tastes and likes/dislikes haven't changed one whit, but the fandom (or rather the public accepted definition of the fandom) has changed significantly. So yeah, if you're not wearing a suit of some sort of ears/tail, you're not 'furry'. At least not according to the current popular definition.
-Banner
Hmmm, guerrilla furry, that could be kinda fun next FC. Dress as respectable as possible without looking like a costume and only whip out the badge as needed to enter the appropriate rooms. Maybe we can start a trend?
Lots of the kids who are in the fandumb now consider us fossils (who were doing furry before all the infantile visual ques became fashion, and before they were born) as non persons, and certainly not furry.
I have heard stories of casual furry weekend gatherings closed to "persons older than 25".
We have lived long enough to see the laughable become the general population of the fandumb.
Has it all degenerated to a fandom of the young assinine and stupid?
On a german forum people have been titulated as 'altfurs' (oldfurs) that are young enough that I would be a 'deadfur', because no one could possibly be as old as I am, furry and still alive.
Furry fandumb was always the illegitimate child of certain science fiction-inclined folks, the untouchable class, and is, so far, earning that reputation in spades.
There seems to be a growing circle of douchebags in the fandom that seem to think it belongs to THEM, and fuck everyone else, never mind the fact they have never personally contributed anything worthwhile to the fandom as a whole. Its not just a symptom of those two, but it exists at the generational level. The Self-Entitlement levels in the next 10 years are going to be amusing as many of these kids with helicopter parents that always got their way, and never had to deal with adversity, start jumping out windows when they lose footing of the ground they stand on.
Either way, you and I both can chalk it up to "Kids these days."
Remember the early days of fandom was far more irritating with factional maneuvering, posturing, and favoritism. We've gotten almost to big for that, except the power we bestowed upon those who run conventions now, but really, if your at odds with one, there is 50 others to go to.
-scratches- his head..
"Im guessing those two had hairs up their asses anyways, as from the moment you came up to them, they were being negative and snarky. Ive seen a few people go off at conventions on non-con personnel for imposing the real world laws onto them such as "no smoking on this balcony".
Ok enough ramble. I think its enough to say that I think your safe in the halls of recognition of fandom accolades.
The thing that I can't understand is, why do they think you need to be furry to be able to know what makes kacey's art good?
That is the truth of it in any fandom. I've had to tell people on BoardGameGeek on occasion that if they like wargames, even a little, they're a wargamer in the only way that counts. There's no secret handshake.
Of course, a few people there had to convince me I was a 'grognard' (the wargamer equivalent to 'greymuzzle') before that. We all have our little blind spots.
All of us are having fun being our odd little selves. None of us do any of this to be part of the 'big group', but we don't have to shut ourselves up in a small closet either.
Seriously though, they sounded like socially stunted jerks.
I seem to be constantly assessing and reassessing exactly what it is to be a furry though, or at least what people generally consider as such. Not for the sake of pidgeon-holing or anything silly like that, just as another point of curiousity. There'll never be an answer to it of course, since it's all dependant on viewpoint... and how much one party is going to be an ass about it.
That said, I think it's still fairly easy to define what's dumb and ignorant, and rudely jumping to conclusions like that ticks both boxes in my book :)
At the same time this can create an amazing amount of pressure to start competing, whether intentionally or not, with others for attention, accolades, prestige, and of course money. I don't know if it is still true but at one time there was an almost unspoken rule that if you weren't showing your art in art shows and taking commissions your work could not be any good! It's stupid but then again all kinds of stupids things in society can be given weight if enough people believe and accept them.
lol!
What's the term for us now? Gray-muzzles?
Woodruff (retired) Dec 1994
Yippee, October 1996
Pinky & Walden are older still, but I can't place a date on that.
Personally I define Greymuzzles as anyone at least five years older than me :)
The way I look at me, I am a polygon object (Those of you who did 3D animation know what I am speak of!) with plains labeled as something like "Chinese" "Commie Hater" "Historian wanna be" "Baketball fan" "Arm chair General" "Metal Head" "Otaku" and so on. Furry is one of the "plains" that construct this 3D object known as
I'm sure those little punks would have pulled the same thing on me. XD
Fandom has grown and diversified a lot since then. I remember when there was the influx of furrymuckers in the early 90s. Who could forget a drunken Eric Blumrich ranting about them, "You have no lives but I love you all?" Furries come from anime fandom now too, even some just see fursuits on the news reports and want to be a part of that.
But if you ask 20 furries their definition of "what is a furry?" you'll get two dozen answers :)
PS. I hope you like my new German Shepherd suit ;)
It really rubs me wrong when, in any fandom, people begin to create these imagined degrees of being a 'true fan' or in this case 'furry.' What difference does it make whether you wear ears, a tail, a suit or none? I had to listen to this crap in every social group I grew up around or was a part of. Pretty elitist sounding and amounts to a lot of nothing.
I prefer to be nondescript these days. I feel comfortable being simply myself. I do not need to dress flamboyantly or outlandish or in accordance to any dress code decreed by others. Being judgmental never looks good upon those that criticize anothers appearance or level of devotion to a fandom they take an interest in.
Both you and Kacey make beautiful art and I'm astounded that those two individuals failed to recognize the years of application and studying it took for the both of you to reach this level of art. I imagine they won't ever realize that.