For the past few years, a lot of things have weighed heavily on my mind, but I've not had the courage to open up about them. Holding in these secrets has not been good for me, so in this journal I'm going to say everything I've been afraid to, whatever the consequences might be. So here goes.

Confession One: The My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fandom is where I experienced my sexual awakening.

We're all likely familiar with the pony show that was popular in the mid 2010s, to a rather concerning degree. I was a little over 18 at the time, and I enjoyed watching pirated reuploads on YouTube, which led me to explore the greater brony community... including the /mlp/ board on 4chan.

From what I saw on greentext compilation videos, /mlp/ was a place full of funny people having wacky conversations, and I wanted to see it for myself. Suffice to say I ended up seeing more than that. In particular, the board's Ass Worship threads awakened something new inside me, and when the mods cracked down on them I jumped ship... to 8chan, where the content was even more extreme.

Being a brony at this time was a creative renaissance for me, as I explored my favourite kinks through gmod pony compositions. Many of my works are still on Derpibooru if you're curious. But it was also a social low point, as the hardcore brony community dragged me into a cesspit of alt-right GamerGate groupthink.

I distinctly remember exiting the fandom around the time Season 4 was announced. I was enjoying the actual show less and less- I couldn't finish watching Season 3 at all- and I didn't want my entire sexual identity to be built on a mediocre children's cartoon. So I bailed. I left the -chan boards for the last time, I chewed out my DeviantArt friends with spiteful DMs so they wouldn't follow me, and I entrenched myself in the general furry community where I have remained ever since.

I definitely recovered socially: I've become much more tolerant of the alternative lifestyles that were so despised by the bigoted movements I used to inhabit. But my attempts to escape MLP as a sexual turn-on have not been as successful.

These ponies continue to present themselves wherever furry pornography can be found, and they always catch my eye a little better than the rest of the stuff. Despite MLP having moved on to a new generation, the Friendship is Magic cast specifically have stuck around, serving as an inescapable reminder of how deeply cringe I used to be, and how pathetic I still am at the core.

I'm still tempted to get back into ponies- re-download their models and play around with them on gmod or sfm to cater to my personal fetishes. But I worry about how regressive that would be, how damaging it would be to relive the time of my life where my thinking was at its most insular and prejudiced. It's a worry that flares up every time I see a horse penis flash my screen as I browse furry sites.

Confession Two: I still have feelings for certain cubs.

This is a rather complicated confession which doesn't really fit in a single sentence. It's not 100% accurate to say I'm attracted to cubs. It's probably not even 50% accurate. But it's also not 100% inaccurate either.

Consider the following: A man posts a collage of all the women he's jerked off to on some pornography subreddit. There's well over a hundred adults in the picture- typical coomer degeneracy, nothing to get mad over- but there are also two girls in the crowd who are clearly preteens. What do you think the commenters are going to focus on?

Obviously they're gonna call him out for jerking off to little girls. Mods are gonna delete his post and ban him for the illegal content. That user might try to appeal- they're less than 2% of the group, he wasn't personally involved in making them do porn, their age is actually irrelevant to him, he actually really hates child porn when it involves literally anyone else- but those arguments are meaningless. He jerks off to kids, so he's a pedophile. End of story.

I too would consider that man a pedophile... but if you replaced that collage of human women with all the characters I've been attracted to, it would have the same proportion of underage characters.

Here's a nearly comprehensive list of all the R34 characters I'm at least slightly attracted to whose sexual immaturity is either confirmed or left ambiguous in their original canon:
Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and other Sonic characters in a similar age bracket. Spyro and Cynder, and Bartholomew the yeti. Jake Long, exclusively in his dragon form. The Ninja Turtles. Spike the dragon, and the teen dragons from the same show. Asriel Dreemurr, Ralsei and the other high-school monsters from Deltarune. Bowser Jr and the Koopalings.

That's the biggest list I can make right now. I'll update this journal if I can think of any more, but I doubt I will. This isn't a big list at all, and most of these examples I prefer to imagine as being of age anyway. Every character you see in a sexual situation in this gallery is intended to be above the age of consent, even if they appeared on the above list.

But I also have to admit I've occasionally enjoyed imagining a few characters as actually being underage. I'm going to keep specific examples contained within this paragraph, so you've been warned. I like to fantasise about Bowser grooming his son for incest pedophilia, I've considered commissioning art of Asriel in his kid form, I once actually commissioned a pic of Bartholomew secretly investigating his brother's dick, and I genuinely prefer Spike the dragon as a short guy with a big butt over any redesign that ages him up.

And yet I have an intense negative reaction to even the tamest cub art that doesn't involve one of my personal exceptions. How is it fair that I would sincerely condemn an artist for drawing porn of Winston from Bluey, when a corner of my brain lights up with glee when Spike the dragon is drawn with a big booty?

It could be that I at least know where my limits are. None of my original characters are underage, nor are they in any way attracted to underage people, not even the serial killer. And even when I do fantasise about underage characters, it never involves myself nor a stand in for myself.

I am strongly opposed to actual pedophilia. I only "enjoy" cub art in the same way one might "enjoy" guro or hyperviolence- as something to observe in the safely contained environment of fiction, never to be experienced in reality. I know plenty of users who openly create and consume artwork involving fictional underage characters, but if I found out they were grooming and abusing actual children I would report and block them without hesitation.

But that's also part of the reason why I've been hesitant to admit this truth about myself. If I accept the part of myself that likes certain cubs and start making and commissioning more of that stuff (which, incidentally I wouldn't post to FurAffinity- my altered stance on fake kid smut wouldn't affect my respect for the site's acceptable content policy) would I be satisfied? What if my urges only grow in severity, needing more extreme examples to satisfy? What if I become the thing that I hate so much? After all, my fetishes have only grown more extreme in the years I've been openly furry.

Confession Three: I have some extremely disgusting kinks

In much the same way that saying "I like some cubs" doesn't capture the full nuances of my situation, I can't just say "I love x kink" because I don't really love x kink in the same way as everyone else.

For instance, the humble fart fetish. If you can stomach looking that stuff up here or on e6, you'll see lots of the same thing: noxious brown-green clouds, abrasive onomatopoeia with lots of F's, B's and P's, and a general focus on a displeasurable stench. I hate all of those things, yet I can also relate to the feeling of relief that comes after releasing an immense buildup of pressure.

That's why I particularly enjoy underwater fart fetish stuff- bubbles are prettier than gas clouds and don't need to be discoloured, the water muffles the sound of farting into a more pleasant reverberation, and the smell is irrelevant because breathing in air isn't a thing in that environment. It's all of the positives with none of the bad things that actual fart fetishists are so worked up about.

I feel a similar way with other bathroom kinks, scat and WS. Most of the stuff I can't get behind because the relief of expelling waste is vastly offset by concerns of hygiene and other olfactory offenses. But then I get rather intrigued by hyperscat and excessive WS. When the subject is able to make enough waste to practically drown themselves in one prolonged movement, realism no longer applies, and concerns about cleanliness evaporate in the face of overwhelming relief.

There's plenty of other stuff I'm morbidly fascinated by. A decade of regular exposure to e621 does things to a person. You'll just have to ask me about it if you want to know the specifics.

Confession Four: I have a debilitating addiction to furry porn

This confession is the one I've wanted to get off my chest for the longest time, but I've always been afraid to, because it throws my entire identity into question. And that's kind of the problem right there: Furry porn is my entire identity.

I transitioned to the furry community around 2015. In that time, I've sunk tens of thousands of dollars into commissioned artwork, met dozens of individuals with similar interests, exposed myself to more tolerant ways of thinking... and developed zero skills useful for independent living.

I can barely manage to sustain myself or my environment. I'm living off a disability pension, struggling to save money, almost incapable of even feeding myself. The only reason I'm not starving to death on the sidewalk is because of support from my mother, a university lecturer with an unfathomable workload who nonetheless takes the time to look after me.

And what have I done to repay this kindness? Holed up in my room, blowing my savings on custom pornography while my body atrophies away. If I wasn't me, I would hate how entitled and selfish I am and would want nothing more than to see me die and rid the world of my burden. But I am me, and honestly I do feel that way about myself.

I can't put all the blame on porn as a concept- I know enough people here to understand that it's perfectly possible to balance a healthy lifestyle with a place in the furry community. But I do not have a healthy lifestyle, and my balance is totally fucked. I'm always sad, always tired, always in bed and always jerking off, and I don't give a shit about anything. All of those traits are a direct cause of all those other traits, trapping me in a vicious entanglement of failure.

And yet, I don't think it would help me to simply quit being a furry altogether. If I deleted my art site accounts and wiped all the porn off my phone and computer, I wouldn't know what to do. I can't hold down a job, I can't pick up any new hobbies, I can't do anything to improve myself. All I can do is sit around and be broken, because I will never find it within me to be anything better.

What now?

I've made my confessions. What you do with the information is up to you. Me, I don't see anything changing for me. Not without a major intervention.

In the event that anything happens to my FA account as a consequence of this journal (you never know), here is a link to my personal Discord channel:

https://discord.com/invite/g896ErY9