I feel you, I have to put my characters as quadruped anymore. Another frustrating part is artist ToS all over this site. They say they don't draw feral and so I dont commission them or message them, then they post art of a dragon. Like how am I supposed to know each individual persons idea of what is and isnt feral? Is feral an intelligent creature or not? Its frustrating 😅

Oh lawdy that sounds annoying- unless they mean like feral nsfw?
That is baffling with saying that then post a dragon.
But in this case QUAD nsfw is fun to draw and they can bite my whole ass.

yeah i don't use feral either cause of that distinction i always tag my quad stuff as quad or notferal or sentientquad to help distinguish between just an animal and a character who can talk like a human but just walks on 4 or more legs.

YEAH exactly, just sad people have to ruin that term over the years, I'll set them on fire if they ruin quad for us. :(
sentient sapient quad's are fun to draw.

yeah understandable ;w; it sucks and hopefully not cause i may actually cry lmao

and i agree! i honestly find quad's easier to draw over anthro characters tho i don't draw either much cause im not good at animal snouts in particular but drawing my sona zipper in their quad form has been excellent practice

Oh man, I got dinged on sheezyart for marking a quad dragon as feral. I did a threat display portrait piece, and it got smacked as "feral nsfw" because they said it was vore.

No vore happening at all, mind you. Not even a "POV Mawshot" piece. Just a dragon snarling with saliva in their mouth. But that was considered "feral nsfw" and thus banned. I managed to argue against it, because A) It's NOT NSFW, and B) it's a sentient quad dragon, and managed to lift the block on the image but stuff like that is exactly why I've been moving away from using "feral" too.

That's really weird- maybe they assumed "vore" because of the saliva which for some unknown reason some people assume saliva with vore which isn't the case.
I'm glad you got it fixed but it's like damn they should pay attention better.

They said it was that plus the title, and that I put stuff like "drool" and "teeth" in the tags. But the thing is I can understand why people might consider it vore-adjacent, so I put stuff like drool and teeth in the tags so people could block it if it's not their cup of tea. I consider it more a horror / threat piece. But if people see it another way, the tags are there to help them filter it out.

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/55046066/ <= This is the piece in question, by the way.

But I was more bothered by the fact they considered that piece NSFW, and in the same sort of vein as bestiality. When it is... not NSFW at all... There's nothing sexual about it. It rubbed me the wrong way.

Funny thing was after the mod repealed the ban on it, they favorited it, so I got a bit of whiplash from that. Lol.

But they told me that it was because I put "feral" in the tag that it was flagged. When I told them the character has both an anthro and quad form, and that this was a portrait of the quad form, they just told me to mark it as quad. But also "technically feral is not incorrect". I don't like how flippantly the term is being considered now, so I just don't use feral anymore.

I absolutely feel this agony. Because My own quads are sentient/sapient talking intelligent beings. I'm not a ζ, I also hate that, that kind of person toutes the ζ as "their label". Like there is a huge difference. It's just frustrating. Because I had to have this conversation regarding someone's dinosaur who talks and exhibits anthro behavior while not being anthro "shaped". I didn't post it due to well the misconception.

Oh yeah I think the animalistic body but exhibiting anthro behavior is pretty cool. But yeah I totally get you, people will still twist the idea of what it's actually meant to be.

Like I Don't want to be considered one of "those" people but I don't draw strictly anthro or quad, I draw lots of things. Just wish some peeps would touch some grass.

Honestly, those kinds of people have no place in my space.

I didn't know there was a difference. XD;

with bestiality and zoo? yeah surprisingly there is but people want to bundle the two terms together.

I mean the feral vs quadruped. I'm just flat out unaware. Never paid attention, or it never came up with me before.

I wish people didn't get so antsy about it.

I still tag with feral on FA but nowhere else but I also use quadruped here too trying to ween people over to it with how it's been used as a 'nono word' lately lmao...it sucks!!!

yeah no kidding omg

it’s why I use the term, as well, nowadays it’s just been tainted.

That...actually make a lot of sense and I think I'm gonna adjust my tags on my sentient quad guy ( O 3 O)

I really feel seen, I am 100% with you on this.

Mood and for this reason that is why I highly hate and have issues with the furry community. Before outside of the community when people heard I like anthro and furry stuff they accused me of being a zoo. Then when I joined the furry community and shared a feral image of my character Pharaoh explaining that feral art is cheaper than anthro art and that I put " this is just what he looks like I am going to rp him anthro ,but this is the only art I have of him right now"

and regardless of that I had the whole furry community on the servers I was on accusing me of being a zoo, accusing me of fucking animals irl and all that crap. Plus the furry community is extreamly biased in what kind of "kinks" your allowed to have and what kind of characters your allowed to have and any character, kink, sexuxality, or even sex outside of their biased veiws gets gaslight, banned, blacklisted ect.

And I am sick and tired of trying to defend myself against the toxic views of the furry community and the terms they adopted to mean bad things when it is not.

I never in my life experienced so much toxicity and biases than going from the roleplaying community to the furry community...and I know a lot of people get mad at me when I say I hate the furry community. But like that is just because of all th toxic shit within the community and their quickness to accuse someone of being a zoo. Hell I have had people come to me about other people asking me if they was a zoo because of the toxic ideaologies that was put in their head and how like...some people scream zoo if they see your character eve hav a horse cock....or omg if it looks like a horse cock your a zoo...and so on and so forth.

I ant changing my terms because they want to change how terms mean to them....they did the same shit with the terms in the alphebet soup community and I ant going to keep tip toeing around their asses when they want to keep changing how terms means. It makes me sick when they keep accusing people of being a zoo....honestly if their going to do that than they have no busy being in the furry community or having an anthro character.

In my opioion....my head can't even keep wrapping around quad, vs sapient ect...bcause I never use those terms so my mind is like " what is that what do you mean" and I have to keep asking over and over and I hate it. but that's just me...it sucks that we have to continueiously say we are not zoos because dumb ass assholes want to keep saying we are.

ha ha sorry for my rant...I just get sick of us having to tip toe over these terms because thy wanna keep changing how things mean.

your words are valid c:

It makes me sick when they keep accusing people of being a zoo....honestly if their going to do that than they have no busy being in the furry community or having an anthro character.
100% on this one,

aww thank you. Yeah it is just annoying that their doing witch hunting when we ant witches. If they wanted to do witch hunting they need to look in the mirrow.

What we call it doesn't actually matter because the issue people have is with the concept, not the word. They can't separate fictional animal characters from actual animals, so they equate enjoying 2D talking tax-paying neon glowstick dogs to the real desire to abuse an actual dog irl.

Of course not saying *not* to use quad instead, call it whatever feels right, but I don't think picking a new word will actually solve the root of the problem

you are right i don't think it will solve the problem even if we stand on the rooftops and preach it people will be ignorant to it

(Prefacing this with "I'm not making a defense of term changes" or disagreeing here this is just my thought process/experiences? gfdghsdjkf I'm on your side of being annoyed)

I think the main reason "feral" has had a change of usage in the fur fandom is a mix of furry art being integrated into more spaces, as well as like... how many big-names are being discovered to be into bestiality. (Also in terms of bestiality and zoo, I've learned that people use it less as lust vs love and more as the fetish vs the title of the person into it). So I think it's at the point now where people wanted a more clear-cut way to define between sapient creatures and "actual animals". And the term "feral" in other spaces/common language was already used as a separation between things considered wild and "non-human" and otherwise disconnected from a human concept of society. I think it just ended up bleeding over in use in that context by a lot of folks who weren't into feral/quad art and characters, or are admittedly just too young to know the history of its usage.

That said, it still really sucks, because (imho) it also normalizes actual bestiality/zoophile art by giving it its own category, where "feral" in my experience always came with the expectation and understanding of sapience and consent being something that existed with the characters.

I still personally will happily draw quads on commission, but I did end up having to add an addendum to my ToS now that I will not draw zoo stuff. But I simply just made it that the character has to be able to pass the Harkness Test. And if they do, then they're good. ...It just kinda sucks to have to do it that way instead of it being implicit like it used to be.