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Some of my unpopular furry opinions
2 years ago
-Bug’s Life and Finding Nemo are partly why I like bug/fish/non-mammal furry characters and so few people tend to talk about all the non-mammal anthro media out there. Even talking/living machines get more credit. As a kid I always wondered what fish and reptiles were thinking because I found the idea of being tiny in a huge world with a totally different perspective fascinating.
-Diane Foxington is just boring. I find most popular “furry crushes” boring though. I kept wishing she’d pull out an edgy joke about “Ha! I became a politician to legally become the biggest kind of crook at all!” and she didn’t and there just wasn’t anything interesting about her design or character to be into for me. I like the snake though because I’m a sucker for cynical characters. Then again I have such unconventional taste I think most people are crazy for going after types I find boring because of media oversaturation.
-My furry stuff is by far my most SFW side. I even make more dirty jokes on my plant shitposting account. Furry stuff just crosses over to irl way too much for me to ever feel safe being publicly NSFW outside of dumb jokes and I really don’t have a preference for anthro vs human for that stuff anyways. Faceless fanfiction sites where the characters of interests are nothing like me physically are so much more comfortable because people are comrades in thirst and not potential threats. Though the “no strong anthro preference” was the clincher for me giving up on having a faceless unrelated alt for it, just didn’t make enough stuff to bother and wasn’t going to put human art on FA lol.
- I have never gotten crap for being mostly SFW and totally straightedge, if anything I’ve had more people get excited that I was that way because they were looking for others like that. I seem to present a very unsexy presence at cons and I am grateful, not sure of it’s the teeth or threat of airbrushing wiping off but I’m not questioning it.
-I am very pro furries being dick-obsessed and repulsed by vag. I like being friends with men and if we’re mutually assured no romo/sexo that is SUCH a relief because that threat taints them so much for me. Never had an issue with anyone sapphic so kind of don’t care there.
-I’ve honestly had few issues with consent in furry spheres, they basically always ask before touching. Anime cons were definitely worse at least circa the mid 2010s. The one incident I had was someone taking a picture of my fursuit feet without asking and that’s so funny I can’t get mad. They’re not even impressive feet, they’re just Rainbow Randall’s “toes stuck on slide on shoes with fur slapped on”.
-It hurts this stupid part of my soul to see legit high end makers have pancake flat ears on suits, especially when they have like, full on pickable noses and stuff. EARS AREN’T FLAT and it cheapens suits visually so much. It’s such a small thing that drives me nucking futs
-Vultures that aren’t lammergeiers are painfully underrated. Also fish that actually look like fish and bugs that have full on bug faces but even those feel more common than fish.
-On a similar note, I unironically like how Shark Tale did anthro fish minus the faces
-Cats may be common species and tabby and tortoiseshell may be just normal natural marking but MAN when done well they’re actually really striking and not very common in suits (probably because they mean nightmare sewing or airbrushing)
-I find brown dogs/canines pretty dull as natural designs at this point but natural scalie colors/patterns can be GOD TIER and are not used enough
-I gave Asterisk unique hands because nobody really did that in 2016. It’s still criminally rare especially with hands being so much more visible and less subject to wear than feet. I can’t be assed to detail something that’ll be worn down by the dirty floor and barely visible.
-There’s so much depth in costume types I wish furries would look into vs just traditional fursuits. Stuff that’s cheaper, more comfortable, has a different feel. Making a cloth mummy suit sometimes has been an idea bopping around, as is making a leather mask/snippers of a crab or something. I feel like facepaint is something with a LOT of potential but I also get why it wouldn’t be common/welcome at cons with the yikes combo of potentially unsealed makeup and hard to clean costumes the cost of a used car
-I feel like the number of people that are sick of the constant EDM of con raves are actually a quiet majority. I’ve personally seen a lot of fursuit dancers going “bro why can’t they play more hip hop and not all wubwub I can’t dance to this” and go nuts for sets that play anything else.
-Airbrushing isn’t that fragile, I airbrushed my suits with watered down acrylic paint from walmart and they’ve held over over years of casual use and only rub off with heavy friction and moisture. Paint dyed fur is even more durable but it’s pretty obsolete now with more color options readily available. Rainbow Randall was all dyed and has been washed dozens of times over almost ten years and still very vivid.
-I get that hip hop and street dancing is probably most popular because it’s most accessible (and it is really cool!) but it would be cool to see more variety at dance comps. My style has grown more belly dance influenced in terms of using more weird isolations, just haven’t gotten into/done anything since I started those classes. There’s a particular style I want to learn more about for my horse character because it’s got very “horsey” foot motions.
-I actually preferred the earlier dates for Megaplex but I don’t go there regularly anymore so no say in that. If it was in late Aug/Sept I couldn’t have done it in college, before the school year was ideal. I’m laughably heat tolerant so that wasn’t a major deal for me. If it was in August this year MAYBE I could have considered but yeah not working with Oktoberfest.
-I actually like FA’s layout. Having an archive is criminally rare on sites at this point and I will hang onto it for dear life since deviantart shat itself.
-Diane Foxington is just boring. I find most popular “furry crushes” boring though. I kept wishing she’d pull out an edgy joke about “Ha! I became a politician to legally become the biggest kind of crook at all!” and she didn’t and there just wasn’t anything interesting about her design or character to be into for me. I like the snake though because I’m a sucker for cynical characters. Then again I have such unconventional taste I think most people are crazy for going after types I find boring because of media oversaturation.
-My furry stuff is by far my most SFW side. I even make more dirty jokes on my plant shitposting account. Furry stuff just crosses over to irl way too much for me to ever feel safe being publicly NSFW outside of dumb jokes and I really don’t have a preference for anthro vs human for that stuff anyways. Faceless fanfiction sites where the characters of interests are nothing like me physically are so much more comfortable because people are comrades in thirst and not potential threats. Though the “no strong anthro preference” was the clincher for me giving up on having a faceless unrelated alt for it, just didn’t make enough stuff to bother and wasn’t going to put human art on FA lol.
- I have never gotten crap for being mostly SFW and totally straightedge, if anything I’ve had more people get excited that I was that way because they were looking for others like that. I seem to present a very unsexy presence at cons and I am grateful, not sure of it’s the teeth or threat of airbrushing wiping off but I’m not questioning it.
-I am very pro furries being dick-obsessed and repulsed by vag. I like being friends with men and if we’re mutually assured no romo/sexo that is SUCH a relief because that threat taints them so much for me. Never had an issue with anyone sapphic so kind of don’t care there.
-I’ve honestly had few issues with consent in furry spheres, they basically always ask before touching. Anime cons were definitely worse at least circa the mid 2010s. The one incident I had was someone taking a picture of my fursuit feet without asking and that’s so funny I can’t get mad. They’re not even impressive feet, they’re just Rainbow Randall’s “toes stuck on slide on shoes with fur slapped on”.
-It hurts this stupid part of my soul to see legit high end makers have pancake flat ears on suits, especially when they have like, full on pickable noses and stuff. EARS AREN’T FLAT and it cheapens suits visually so much. It’s such a small thing that drives me nucking futs
-Vultures that aren’t lammergeiers are painfully underrated. Also fish that actually look like fish and bugs that have full on bug faces but even those feel more common than fish.
-On a similar note, I unironically like how Shark Tale did anthro fish minus the faces
-Cats may be common species and tabby and tortoiseshell may be just normal natural marking but MAN when done well they’re actually really striking and not very common in suits (probably because they mean nightmare sewing or airbrushing)
-I find brown dogs/canines pretty dull as natural designs at this point but natural scalie colors/patterns can be GOD TIER and are not used enough
-I gave Asterisk unique hands because nobody really did that in 2016. It’s still criminally rare especially with hands being so much more visible and less subject to wear than feet. I can’t be assed to detail something that’ll be worn down by the dirty floor and barely visible.
-There’s so much depth in costume types I wish furries would look into vs just traditional fursuits. Stuff that’s cheaper, more comfortable, has a different feel. Making a cloth mummy suit sometimes has been an idea bopping around, as is making a leather mask/snippers of a crab or something. I feel like facepaint is something with a LOT of potential but I also get why it wouldn’t be common/welcome at cons with the yikes combo of potentially unsealed makeup and hard to clean costumes the cost of a used car
-I feel like the number of people that are sick of the constant EDM of con raves are actually a quiet majority. I’ve personally seen a lot of fursuit dancers going “bro why can’t they play more hip hop and not all wubwub I can’t dance to this” and go nuts for sets that play anything else.
-Airbrushing isn’t that fragile, I airbrushed my suits with watered down acrylic paint from walmart and they’ve held over over years of casual use and only rub off with heavy friction and moisture. Paint dyed fur is even more durable but it’s pretty obsolete now with more color options readily available. Rainbow Randall was all dyed and has been washed dozens of times over almost ten years and still very vivid.
-I get that hip hop and street dancing is probably most popular because it’s most accessible (and it is really cool!) but it would be cool to see more variety at dance comps. My style has grown more belly dance influenced in terms of using more weird isolations, just haven’t gotten into/done anything since I started those classes. There’s a particular style I want to learn more about for my horse character because it’s got very “horsey” foot motions.
-I actually preferred the earlier dates for Megaplex but I don’t go there regularly anymore so no say in that. If it was in late Aug/Sept I couldn’t have done it in college, before the school year was ideal. I’m laughably heat tolerant so that wasn’t a major deal for me. If it was in August this year MAYBE I could have considered but yeah not working with Oktoberfest.
-I actually like FA’s layout. Having an archive is criminally rare on sites at this point and I will hang onto it for dear life since deviantart shat itself.
yes I just want to see more fish and buggies.
do you want to make a eukaryote suit?
You know what as a kid I vividly remember this part in my sister’s dance recital where one of the adult dance classes did a space aliens number where they were just sheet-clad blobs and I feel like that’a how I’d make a cell costume, just airbrush the stuff on a sheet and throw it over myself. ngl… that might be an idea to pull off doing something to The Blob Song, because I find it hilarious but I have the totally wrong physical presence for it. It could be a hilarious and easy to transport walkaround character in general, maybe I’ have to seriously think about the concept.
Better than unique shitshows that are exceptional in how terrible they are (like that one guy that was a wajas artist years ago being a nutcase and doing triple-crossing crap I can’t even wrap my head around)
As for fish actually looking akin to an actual fish (while still being anthropomorphic or at least personified) definitely hits a difficult mark though I think peeps prefer style over realism the exception would be insect characters that do have some accurate head-face appearances to their real life-counterparts.
My fish characters as a kid were veeeery humanized, basically just my weird kid conception of the human world but underwater. I haven’t done anything super serious since but I did bop around the idea of something about moray eel and grouper buddies based on the dynamics of how the species sometimes hunt cooperatively. For how much I like out there fantasy stuff it feels like I make the most headway with mostly human world settings, or something with established rules already in place to keep me from getting too wrapped up in things. The thing about communication is really cool though, there’s a bad bass pun to be made there lol
I would have to take pics but there’s some really odd humanoid bug mask designs in WT Benda’s Masks book, one has a sort of goblin face with the nose as the proboscis and compound eyes above the eyeholes. Humanoid bugs have honestly had some VERY inventive designs in mass media. I just find it kind of disappointing that a lot of them in the furry sphere tend to be just kind of chibi things with antenna attached.
Ah alright, for some reason making me think of sort of underwater villages and the lost city of Atlantis while replacing human elements with mainly well anthro fish. Well what did ya do with the moray eel and grouper idea? To keep the foundation grounded, this understandable as it can turn into lot's of overthinking basic life for an individual or questioning how the population's activity in worldbuilding. To the communication thing, yes it's interesting and there's a website that has a dedicated article on how fish hear (with some sound gallery examples of fish making noises that are audible to even humans.) As for another sense, even visuals can matter. Fish having certain color patterns on their body due to how light is viewed underwater at certain depths (water more or less eats light) and depending on the area you may see some reoccurring color patterns such as blue backs and grey bellies on fish (especially pelagic) while reef fish may vary wildly and don't have as much consistency. It can get weirder when it comes to deeper depths (with little to no light, with blue being one of the last color to witness) and then the sea floor as well. (I dunno I enjoy reading about other animals and what we can understand of them.)
I don't write much either honestly and sort of had a few ideas of trying to imagine coastal reef sapient fish person communities and the weird idea that they're so scared of humans they're practically living myths with little confirmation and how they do interact with humans may vary by regional circumstances. The other idea was sort of joking into poking at if enlightening fish to some degree with technology. Even questioning after acknowledging water-based computing, the joke of a 'hydropunk' world (especially with other fluids not just water being used.)
Oh I am curious now as I love masks and if you ever did take pictures where would you send them? As for humanoid bugs in mass media, thinking about pre-2000's scifi works. To the furry sphere, yeah can see what you mean though I have noticed few that retain moreso monstrous designs that have odd shaped heads and retain their large mandibles.
Didn’t actually get anywhere with the idea tbh, besides a shipwreck reef setting and maybe a sort of mafia thing going on. The setting I really got in too deep on was a failed sort of tropical high fantasy one with differing anthro shifting traditions between the cultures that had some interesting ideas but no overarching plot while I was agonizing over pet fur-bearing goldfish and how they had an aroid equivalent of brassica oleracea with multiple fruit/vegetables from the same species. I actually included a significant plot point about how a human from a desert culture turned into a scalie would deal with UV light needs when they lived fully covered all their life and exposed skin feels uncomfortable and alien.
You sure are tempting me to pick up the grouper and eel idea though, or some kind of fish xenofiction in general. The whole difference in senses would make the communication troubles between species in my idea even more interesting and there could be a storyline about them both halfway misinterpreting each other. Deep sea life could be even more fun, with mysterious objects and remains coming from above but never any direct contact with living surface life. Saturation divers coming down would be an actual alien landing. Ngl I always found the underwater world way more interesting than space and that would be a fun twist on alien invasion.
I’ve meant to post a compilation of anthro designs from that book since that thing was printed circa WWII and super expensive since it’s way out of print. He had an absolutely wonderful art nouveau/deco cartoonish style incredibly of his time in all the best ways. When it comes to very humanoid bugs with unique designs off the top of my head I think of George and the Giant Peach. Though I like the more robot/mechanical/armored look in insect/arthropod designs and among my fav movie anthro bugs are the terrifying crab monster things from the Neverending Story II. Though those are more like ambiguous monsters because they also look like vampire bats, Jenny Hannivers, AND those stargazer fish.
With deep sea life, I would tend to think would be much more isolated (depending on the organisms unless they vertically migrate) from most upper region communities and that there being few who would be noticed let alone communicate with if you ever wanted an ambassador an idea of what's going on down yonder. That's an interesting point to make saturation divers as the example of first contact with humans as unknown as they are to these creatures. There's some pelagic fish that will also dive deep to some depths to have also probably recognize the deeper sea life. Making fish a twist on an alien invasion but by sea? Well there was also XCOM Terror From The Deep (a video game that takes place after and is more or less XCOM UFO Defense but underwater.)
Other than that, I sometimes thought if some humans had actual use in working with fish or exploiting them would extend to details such as piracy and or mercenaries especially on cargo or sea routes causing a nuance to lawlessness of the oceans and a lack of ability to trade (or explore other worlds to land.) To imagine some areas left to develop on their own without newer humans coming by boat or ship. Otherwise modern day issues would be: Damage to undersea cables, oil platforms wouldn't be viable so offshore drilling wouldn't be as prevalent, and among other things the lack of care to keeping the ocean clean (due to fear of what comes out of it.)
The silliest thought I ever had would be a sunken ship that was floated up again by using a 'giant' sized version of a snail that would blow out oxygen bubble rafts and then on land maybe a hermit crab has taken the ship as it's shell as well, with its crew any fish that's comfortable enough to be out of the water even if temporarily then hiding when the sun hits only for passerbys to be see a ghost ship crawling on land at night around islands.
As for the compilation, I imagine there's somethings that hold ye back or you could also host it on some other website and host a collage preview here I guess for the link (if that's allow anyway.) As for the book, huh I guess this does hold a lot of inspirations for ya in some of the things I noticed you have uploaded.