Soundtrack: The Show Must Go On, The Real Tuesday Weld
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZNASeXGA10

By this point in my life my furriness was a part of me. I could no more stop being a furry than I could cut off a limb, but my level of participation in the fandom did wax and wane over the years.

When I started posting art, the pendulum swung back to “active” after a few years of relative quiet. This pattern reappeared over the years - I never consciously “quit” the fandom, but some years I’d go to multiple cons and be heavily involved, and some years I would be doing other things and only chatting with a few furpals online. Some years I’d post dozens of pics and full comics, while other years were fallow. It happens. My particular form of undiagnosed ADHD means that I am super into something for six months to a year, then I hit some kind of wall and bounce off in another direction, and I’m into THAT for six months or a year, and so on, until I eventually come back to the first thing and the great cycle repeats. So it was with furry art.

In 2004, while living in Boston, I drew a 13 page comic that would define my art for many years - Playtime. It was a simple story of a teen fur playing with diapers alone in his house, based heavily on my own past and real life events. Instead of wild fantasies of age regression and hyper and macro and what not, this was just a realistic portrayal of the kinds of things I liked to do IRL. I intended it as an instruction manual of sorts - you can try this at home! I hadn’t seen any babyfur/diaper-fetish comics that began in a pharmacy with the main character nervously buying diapers. I wanted to capture all of the process, not just the hot parts. I also enlisted the help of a bunch of furs I knew at the time to assist with flat colors and cleanup - it was a team effort. I distributed it for free, as this was long before Patreon and other means of being paid to draw that weren’t straight commissions.

While I took the odd commission, I resisted monetization heavily. I did NOT want paywalls of any kind, as they were counter to my entire artistic philosophy - to have as many furs as possible see my artwork, in the hopes that others with the same kinks as me wouldn’t feel alone with their interests. Every piece I posted was an advertising flyer saying “Hey! Do you like this stuff too? It’s okay if you do!” That was and is my primary objective in art. If I can pay the rent with art so much the better, but I’m still allergic to paywalls and subscriptions and such. When art turns into a job then its stress levels rise and I shut down and lock up. I made several attempts at a Patreon-like model and none of them lasted more than a few months. My artwork needs to remain free and flexible and on my terms and schedule. If I could have people just pay me with no expectations but for me to put out art at my own pace that would rule.

My burgeoning art career put me in touch with dozens of new furpals, many of whom are reading this post right now :3 most of whom were not on FurryMUCK or even Livejournal. My main means of furry socializing was becoming instant messengers - still true to this day with Telegram and Signal. I was still on the MUCKs, but beginning to feel the stagnation of those platforms. I also frequented various Yahoo Groups and other message boards where babyfurs of all stripes would gather.

For a few years I was only posting art to my own website, because you were not allowed to post adult furry work to the art sites of the day, like DeviantArt and Sheezy. That changed in 2005 when FurAffinity launched, and it quickly became the central place for furry art and fiction. And it’s had nothing but controversy and strange policy shifts and capricious moderation ever since, but it also became the beating, janky heart of of furrydom, at least the art part of it.

Around this time I hadn’t DJed a con dance in quite a few years, but I felt the itch to do another DJ event and so at a couple of ACs I pulled together a bunch of inflatable beanbag chairs and a sound system and assembled a chillout lounge called Capsule - not for dancing, that was handled elsewhere, but just for cool downtempo tunes in an environment that was more conducive to relaxation and chilling out from a stressful convention. I DJed along with Tailsy who brought his Ableton Live rig for mixing and sampling of various tunes.

In 2006 I checked out a new thing called Twitter and while it had a lot of technical problems early on, it reminded me very much of FurryMUCK’s public shout system, and I immediately took to it. In 2007 I began to write stories on my various sexy topics, in addition to the pics and comics, which further cemented my reputation for over-the-top fetishism and exaggerating certain key details about my situations and characters.

Furry fandom’s growth continued to accelerate year over year, and every con was bigger than the last. I’d go to Anthrocon and just boggle at how huge this thing was getting, how it was a 20 minute walk to the dealers room, how i would move through crowds of furries i didn’t know, and feeling like a stranger in a fandom that was quickly getting overwhelming. I began to prioritize cons based on who I knew was going so I could meet up and hang out with them - because picking a con where none of my friends were meant I’d be sitting around by myself feeling like a weirdo. Even at cons where I had lots of friends, scheduling conflicts and being at loose ends with nobody to hang out with was a frequent occurrence. Even the most popufur of popufurs has to deal with that problem, just because cons are so big. Axiom and I began to flee the con for an afternoon or an evening, eating dinners in local restaurants, using a con as an excuse to hit the sights in the city the con was in, especially during the days. I still like doing that.

At the start of the decade a big furcon had ~1200 attendees. Then it was 2500. By the end of the 2000s they were pushing 4000. Mindblowing. Even at 2000 people cons were getting too big as far as I’m concerned. I began to attend smaller regional cons like FurFright just to bring back the intimate feel of cons of the past.

Another thing happening in furry was the rise of fursuiting as the dominant activity in the fandom, eclipsing artwork. In the 90s, fursuits certainly existed, but they were somewhat crude homely affairs made with hot glue and discount fun fur. Making your own fursuit was a rite of passage for the furs who were suiters. And suiting was just one of the things furries did. Drawing was the bigger activity. The stars of furrydom were artists, and occasionally writers.

As the media published story after story about furries with pictures of fursuiters front and center, the association of furry with fursuits became stronger and stronger. Furry culture shifted from art to costuming. People started to think you HAD to have a fursuit to be a furry, or that furry fandom was only about fursuits. And commissioned fursuit makers began to appear, charging thousands of dollars for professional-level work, and quickly getting waiting lists and fan meetups of their own. You had entire furry species created with rules about their fursuits, like sergals and dutch angel dragons. Fursuiters were becoming the stars of the fandom, and having a great suit was seen as a ticket to popularity.

I have never once in three decades in this fandom ever bought, made or worn a fursuit. Its just not what I’m in the fandom for. I don’t want to wear a hot carpet for five hours. My furriness is about art and drawings and stories, and online RP. It’s about text and images. I bow in my furriness to nobody. I am no less a fur than any fursuiter in an elaborate costume.

You do not have to be a fursuiter at all to be totally furry and a full member of this fandom. Thats the most pernicious myth that really began in the 2000s that I wish I could dispel.

Axiom and I moved from southern Mass to New York City in 2007, because of our jobs. We found ourselves in Brooklyn, in the middle of hipster central, where everyone was growing long beards and making pickles and craft cocktails. While I had immediately slotted in with the local fur scene in every city we’d moved to previously, NYC didn’t have a fur scene of note. Or if it did, I didn’t really pay attention to it. We’d see someone for lunch now and then. Or out-of-towners would visit us. Or we’d travel to a con. But as the decade ended, although I was still posting art and such, our furry participation had once again dropped quite a bit. The pendulum had swung once more.

I began to look outside of furry and in 2010 I found the world of kink.

More later