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Questionnaire: How did you get here?
13 years ago
I'm always interested in hearing about how we found our way to this unusual interest. If you wish, feel free to answer here or in your own journal.
1. How did you discover this fandom?
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you do draw [edit: oops, unfinished question! I was supposed to ask "Do you draw, write, build costumes, participate in forums, etc.?]
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
I'm tagging no one! Answer only if you feel like it. Thank you for your interest.
1. How did you discover this fandom?
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you do draw [edit: oops, unfinished question! I was supposed to ask "Do you draw, write, build costumes, participate in forums, etc.?]
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
I'm tagging no one! Answer only if you feel like it. Thank you for your interest.
-At the age of 17, I did an internet image search for "werewolves" after watching Teen Wolf (don't laugh!) Among the traditional fantasy images of werewolves doing werewolfy things like running through the forest or howling atop a cliff, there were drawings of anthro wolves posing in a pinup style. This led me to Furnation, where I found a drawing by Wookie of a wolf sitting alluringly in a bathtub. It was then I learned that this was a "thing."
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
-I joined a forum of lycanthropes to discuss werewolf matters, but I lost interest (I don't believe that I'm actually a wolf) and continued looked at imaging sites like Furnation, VCL, Yerf, and Y!Gallery when they hosted anthro works. I remember when Y!Gallery banned anthro content and FA rose to prominence. I began to draw anthro animals in 2006, gradually got better, and joined FA a few days before AC 2010.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
-I was in Pittsburgh during AC 2010 on a unrelated matter, and I stopped into the convention center on Saturday. By then, people were posting pictures of themselves on FA, and I felt like a stalker when I recognized most of the artists I had come to follow regularly on FA. I barely mustered the courage to approach and ask
The first person I met after establishing myself on FA was
4. What is you level of involvement with the community?
-I draw pictures and share them in online imaging forums for my amusement, and to connect with the people that I've admired in this fandom for so long. At least once a week I stream a drawing session in an effort to re-create the feeling of drawing with friends at cons. I hope to make longer comics, posters, and related items in the future. I attend conventions when I can and I look forward to hanging out with people online and in person. Fursuiting looks like fun, but I can't justify the expense at the moment.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
-It was something innate; I enjoyed cartoons with anthro characters greater than human ones, but I wasn't seeking them out exclusively. I think it was the exposure to the highly specialized content during that fateful image search that opened up something in me.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
-I was heavily into photography and videography at the time, but I wasn't drawing. I drew until I was in middle school, but a few years passed from when I found the fandom to when I began drawing anthro content. Finding the fandom definitely got me drawing again. I dearly wanted to make a graphic novel someday, and now the dream is slowly coming true.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
-More time with furries, definitely! I regularly hand out with colleagues and friends who aren't related to the fandom, but when my furry friends are as close as a smartphone, it's easy to stay in touch throughout the day. Streaming my drawings has recently become my favorite social outlet, and it concerns me a little that I might spend too much time with people online. But if given a choice between making small talk about school politics with a colleague or sharing jokes with some of the dearest, brightest and most creative friends I've made in my life, what would you choose?
'questionnaire' is a dacteurian word
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long? Superlurk, tho I made an account here a while ago.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person? I don't think I've ever exchanged real life words with a furry. There used to be a guy who would show up at happy hours at the bar I go to who had the old 'lolfurries' shirt, so I assume he was.
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? I watch artists and sometimes get things like livestream sketches, and follow a bunch of folks on twitter and talk at them randomly.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom? Yes.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom? Nope.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom? Outside the fandom.
2. About a year until I turned 18.
3. Meeting
4. I'm often called a camp-follower. I like furries, and I like the furry community, but I suppose I don't feel as furry as others or am as involved with writing as I used to be. My level of involvement with the community has dropped with my assessment of the venues for socialization among furries (In short, I think FurAffinity sucks)
5. I suppose so, yeah. I liked cartoons. I had a friend when I was very young who was interested in zoology, and together we talked a lot about animals, cause that's an interest younger kids have, I suppose. It's easy to anthropomorphize animals once you've seen it done so much in the popular culture.
6. I had been writing before I became a furry, and only started writing furry porn at others' suggestions. Outside of furry, most of my writings have been humorous, political, existential, or a combination thereof. Before I became furry I enjoyed making a comic called Awkward Hand Turkey Theatre which involved hand turkeys reimagining historical events and personalities. Stuff like Henry Darger being forced to participate in a game show called "PROVE YOU'RE NOT CRAZY"
7. Certainly with furries, but it's all relative. I'm shy and don't make friends easily. Or any at all, really. I get terrible social anxiety when I'm around people, and it's much easier to communicate online, and to find acquaintances through social venues such as the fandom, than it is in the real world. But even online I'm starting to find myself more and more anxious in "public" situations.
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long? Considering I didn't know what a furry was when I started out looking at the pictures I suppose you can say I was a lurker for a good couple years. Then I added myself to FA and the fa forums and wanted to become more involved.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person? In person was my friend Wolfy (seriously everyone calls him that). He was the one who inadvertently got me more into the fandom. We had been friends for a long time online and then he told me he considered himself a furry, and he came to visit me for a couple weeks.
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you draw? I draw but not so well, and I have a big passion in writing but I have a problem with never finishing what I start. I have a comic that I've completed up to about 20 pages, and if I can finish it I plan on posting it up.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom? Always did, loved anything Disney. I also loved Pokemon and Digimon, and would draw werewolves and anthro dogs all over my school folders.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom? When I got into the fandom I really felt like I had somewhere to belong, and somewhere for my art to belong. I never drew people as much as I drew animals and I'm sure some people thought I was a little weirder for it.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom? I don't have many furry friends outside of the internet. I'd say I have two, and three if you count my girlfriend who I've sort of converted. I hang out with regular friends, and they don't think I'm weird for being a furry. When I'm online though I spend a lot of time on FA and occasionally playing stuff like second life. I have started going to conventions in the past year or so though. :] So I'm makin' some more furry friends slowly but surely.
I was looking up kid's shows that kinda related to furry back in 2001ish. Ended up going to the related links area of a whole mess of different sites and eventually ended up at VCL.
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
Lurked from 2001 till 2006. Didn't take the fursona part too seriously and kept switching species here and there till 2010. Stuck with otter since.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
Oh God, the less said about that, the better. I won't even name drop. I've found his FA since we've met.
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you draw?
Eh, chat here and there and get art. That's it. I'd need a car to make it to cons, so that won't happen any time soon.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Yeah. The show I looked up that ended up leading me to the fandom was anthro. :P
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
I started drawing, but I didn't continue. Had I continued, maybe those skills would have improved. :P
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
Friends not involved in the fandom. Just made a vent journal about that. Kinda frustrated with the locals here. I feel invisible to em, to be honest. It's kind of annoying. I'm sure my priorities are off and I need to just chill out and take things for what they are.
2. yes
3. yes
4. Absolutely!
5. yes
6. yes
7. no.
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3370257/
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long? No, as my name shows, I was a very anonymous person at the beginning. I didn't make an FA account until 2006, and didn't even comment or post anything until after I turned 18. :P
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you draw? I write some stories when I can, but mostly I'm a musician. Music is probably the least furry thing here on FA. XD
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom? Yes, as a kid I'd always wonder why the male characters that didn't wear pants didn't have visible genitalia. I was always a perverted guy. XD
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom? I've been performing long before I knew what furry was. :P As for writing, I started writing in 2008, if I recall correctly.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom? Online, probably more furries. Offline, people not involved.
2. it didn't take long for me to adopt the status as a furry i guess. at 14 i was interested in drawing shonen-manga style characters but that quickly faded in interest. i started drawing action/adventure furry characters with guns and stuff to roleplay. eventually i made a true fursona... a wolf of course. full-blown furry!
(eventually i lost interest in roleplaying though since most RPers were also into playing mature scenes and that scared me off. and i wanted to write my own stories.)
3. i suppose it was that kid in 8th grade! i never met another furry until i decided to attend a furry meetup party in the city. i didn't really make friends from that.
4. art is my trade. most if not all of my art output involves furry characters. i hate to be the "humans suck!" kind but they're just more fun to draw. i can't explain it and don't ask me to, it's embarrassing enough as it is! i am now good friends with furs in real life thanks to attending conventions.
5. i guess like you, it was innate. it wasn't my key favorite but it was always there. there was pokemon. i loved redwall and other books and films that featured courageous rodent characters. i always loved real animals and i had many pets in my childhood: birds, hamsters, rats, dogs, etc!
6. ohhh yes. furry is what really truly inspired me to hone my skill. i have been drawing since i learned to hold a pencil. but i never truly studied it until i discovered the fandom on deviantart and began learning all the keywords- anatomy, composition, perspective, what have you.
7. recently i hang out with phylum and hauntedhouse when i'm not doing schoolwork. they are my only friends in atlanta! i haven't made any close friends at school :(. before moving here i would spend most of my time with friends from high school. they know i'm a furry and they're totally indifferent about it. better than nothing!
1. How did you discover this fandom?
It was one halloween evening at the tender age of 16 when I discovered literature by
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
I kinda lurked, but soon enough, I took part in things.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
Uh, Memorable...Lets just leave it at that.
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you draw
I do draw, and I guess I do have some involvement in the community..I do meets and such.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Well, I guess I did like anthro animals before the fandom, since in cartoons we were exposed to them...
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
I had always been drawing before furry.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
I barely had friends before joining the fandom, but now I have a ton of friends..Its sad that I have no outside the fandom friends, but Hey, whatcha gonna do?
2. I was like 15 and scared to join and so i would just lurk artdecade and decaf (didn't have an account on here so i didnt know they like pretty much only drew smut) and a ton of other people and really wanted to talk to them...and I joined eventually and it was weird i was really young.
3. the president of gsa of my highschool was a furry and was so gross and like would wear ears and was just weird and carried around a fox plush and it was all bad. I really havent had any like IN PERSON interactions beyond that because I am too scared all the time.
4. 0.5 I only do things on here and that isnt very much...I have never been to a con and I have never like gone to a meet and I have never like hung out with a group of furries ever because idk I'm really nervous about it for some reason. I keep it really tightly under wraps and like no one knows until i tell them...
5. I really liked animal cartoons but I guess everyone here did
6. I mean I guess so? I tihnk it was just sort of coincidental like, i just sort of grew up and made more things and changed a lot in styles and junk idk plus I found a group of people that liked the things I made and so it made me feel good and made me want to make more things.
7. I really only talk to one and that is
hello redacteur how are you
I was actually searching the key words "Fat Dragons" on google and stumbled upon
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
I am still lurking unfortunately, I don't have a lot of confidence but lately I've been a bit more assertive following recent events :)
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
I went to Furnal Equinox the first year it started, it was small cramped and there was more people than there was space. The game room was filled with people and I just lost myself in all of the noise and had a good time.
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you draw?
At the moment, nothing. With recent events, I've been drawing far more and attempting to better myself.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Yes, I was just fascinated with them the older I got, I find them more expressive and fun to draw.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
I didn't do much for a couple of years, but it has been inspiring for me to take on drawing classes and even get try to get in a career that requires art (at the moment, it's Game Development)
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
Lurking, but I want to the change that
It was Eric Schwartz's fault. It was 1992, and I was eight, and I discovered screencaps of his artwork in an Amiga magazine. I think it was the January issue of The One Amiga. In some ways I was precociously fascinated by sexuality, albeit unwise as to how it actually worked, and I'd always liked human-yet-not characters (animal people of course, but also monsters, robots and all sorts of other anthropomorphic things). Schwartz combined one fascination with the other in a way that had never occurred to me until then
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
I didn't know the fandom actually was a thing until I got the internet in 1997. I staved off really interacting with other furries - partly because there really was no clear way for me to interact with other furries - until the early 2000s when forums were becoming more of a thing
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
I was in a university computer lab just goofing off, and I happened to notice (being very nosy) that the guy who'd sat down next to me was on a furry forum. I was too shy to speak to him then and there, so I ended up making a note of the forum and contacting him through it. We met properly three days later. We've long since parted company as friends (long story), but without him there might not have been a Sedric. Actually meeting someone was what catalysed me into seriously constructing a fursona
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you draw
Hard to know how to answer the first part. I do have my fair share of furry friends. I don't draw, but I do write
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Yeah, as noted above I was aware of Schwartz and my own peculiar interest long before I knew it was anyone but him and me
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
From the age of ten or eleven I've wanted to be creative in some way or other. Furry didn't immediately amplify that, but it would in its roundabout way provide me with a focus that I'd been lacking
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
Including the internet, furries are just edging it right now. Purely in the flesh though, I spend much more time with non-furries
1. How did you discover this fandom?
The best way to put it is accidentally. I've always dug cartoon critters and always drew them. I believe I looked the term up when someone mentioned it in an old chatroom back in the day.
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
I was already at the level of participation I'm at currently. I pretty much just continued on as I had been. = P
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
In person? No idea. Not exactly something the folks I've met scream out. Aside from seeing folks at comic conventions in ears and tails, I don't really have much outside interaction with furries.
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you draw
I draw. I write. I don't fursuit or RP or hit up furry conventions. Claustrophobia, lack of interest and an extreme lack of interest kinda' kill those three off respectively.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Yup.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
I've pretty much always been as creatively active as I am. I can say for certain that this fandom has influenced some of my choices. Mostly in the using anthro characters in more than just 'Funny Animal' stories.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
I spend way more time with folks outside the fandom. Way more time. If I were to give it a number, I'd say 10 to 1 I'm dealing with folks who have no clue what the fandom is nevermind that I'm part of it. Same goes for most of the stuff I'm in to. = )
-I was 18, and attending my first semester of college. I met a friend in one of my classes, who introduced me to the rest of her friends, who would hang around the cafeterium to talk and draw on their tablets. One of them began to talk about the furry fandom and revealed to me their FA page, which both disgusted me and fascinated me.
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
-I was intrigued by the fanart, but was appalled by the adult art. I began to consider that hanging around this site would be helpful in learning feral/animalistic anatomy. After diving head-first into the material, I started to built a tolerance.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
-I hadn't known it, but it turned out I knew a furry before I ever knew what a furry WAS. My (now) boyfriend, who had been an ex at the time. My fantastic fox :)
4. What is your level of involvement with the community? Do you draw?
-Outside of my boyfriend and myself, I mainly draw and skim around FA. Ever once in a great while, my fox informs me of a furry meet, and we'll go.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
-Mainly in cartoons, like Scooby, Courage, Swat Cats, Looney Toons, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, etc. I drew toons, but I wanted to learn more. I've always loved werewolves; when I was young, I would actually pretend to be one.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
-I started to practice anthros more and more, but wanted to build my own style and understanding. Lately, I've been sort of taking a break.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
-Online, I spend time equally with both furry and non-furry friends. Offline, I spend most of my time with my non-furry friends, but most with furry boyfriend :)
I discovered it thanks to StarFox. I played to the first StarFox at my friend's console and I got amazed and thrilled by the game, specially by its main Character, Fox McCloud. Then when the gamecube version went out, I started to collect all the images about the game and Fox itself. It was then that I entered in contact with the fandom by seeing
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
I lurked around a year or so. Then, I decided first to participate in forum webcomics and watching as a guest here in FA.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
I've never met another furry in person, neither talk to anybody, apart from writing in forums and chatting.
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you draw
I can't draw. I write short tales and do some music.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
That's the key I think. Anthropomorphic animals have been present in my life since I was a child, with series like "Dogtanian and the Three Musketeers", "Around the World with Willy Fog", "Sherlock Hound" and, of course, all Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
Not specially, but at least I found a place to share this creativity with others.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
That depends. Right now I'm a little alone, so I past most of the time in the furry fandom. I hope that would change, for my sanity's sake
this is not my beautiful wife
In the 8th grade (10 years ago!), one of my friends was an artist who was more interested in anime, but got me to join DA and introduced me to the anthro submissions tag.
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
I was super active at first, but then I realized I don't really enjoy drawing. So now I lurk.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
In high school, there was a girl in my art class who was a furry. She didn't really draw furries terribly often, but she was amazingly talented in the classical sense and was really inspiring to watch!
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you draw
I mostly lurk. I'll post something if I feel it's additive (like this journal!), but I try to avoid generic "Good job!"s and "I dis/agree." Not sure why.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Yes.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
It surged at the beginning, but when I realized I was doing it for the wrong reasons, it pretty much stopped. I don't regret the time I spent on it, though.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
People not involved with the fandom. Not a conscious decision, just a coincidence.
I went searching for info on how to draw Sonic the Hedgehog when I was younger and ended up finding anthro-art. Then after joining a forum for Sonic related discussions there was a moderator who was one of "I'M FURRY AND PROUD!" sorta people with a penchant for Disney's Robin Hood. So my first impression of furries was "These people are peculiar" and it hasn't changed since.
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
I made artwork and frequented other artists' webpages. This was way back before FA was around.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
Can't say I can answer this one yet.
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you draw
I draw; I make comics; I sell artwork! I don't go to furmeets or conventions so I guess my involvement is very limited.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Sure, but I didn't draw many of them till later on.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
I was creative regardless. This stuff just gave my creativity more variety. :]
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
It's pretty even, really.
After watching an episode of "Redwall" at a friend's house, I googled it (though I was never really a big fan of the show), and one of the results was somebody's (g-rated) fanart on their art website. Being 14, I naturally clicked the link to their "adult" art gallery, and the first naughty furry picture I remember seeing was a group of bikini-clad generic furry girls playfully spraying each other with Super Soakers. From there I was linked to that artist's VCL gallery, and.... so on. Wish I knew who that artist was.
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
I "lurked" (if that's what you want to call it) on VCL and, later, fchan, until last May, when I signed up for FA.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
I have never met another furry in person. Now that I think about it, there was this obviously-gay-but-closeted guy in my a few of my high school classes who I once saw had a risque male furry pin-up as his laptop's desktop background.
4. What is your level of involvement with the community?
I've been enjoying the two-way creative involvement since joining FA -- before I joined, my involvement was strictly fetish.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Doesn't every North American child weaned on Disney movies and Saturday morning cartoons?
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
I've been doodling comics for years, but since joining FA I've been drawing more on my own time, trying to improve my skills. Getting feedback & looking at others' work has been greatly inspiring.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
Since I know no furries in real life, I hang out solely with non-furs. However, the time I've spent on Facebook has been slowly dwindling since being more involved with FA. It's weird and sorta fun living a double life >:D
I'd like to go to a con sometime in the future, though!
Even though it was pretty late, not more than a few years ago I can't remember whether I discovered it through adult internet searches or the numerous webcomics, it probably happened about the same time. Links to forums and art sites and such eventually brought me to FA.
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
Apart from one or two webcomic forums where I didn't really meet anyone interesting I lurked for a year or two until making this account. Then I gradually started commenting, following livestreams and eventually chatting a bit.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
Never had a confirmed one, living on this isolated rock, but I know there are some furries here and I'm always on the look out for furry tendencies among my real life associates.
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you draw
Sadly I have virtually no creative talents, all such pursuits having been abandoned in the teenage years.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Definitely, I always preferred the anthropomorphic cartoon and later comic characters. I was also very late in abandoning my stuffed animals and childhood roleplay with them and my friends. Being able to speak with animals would have been my preferred superpower as a kid.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
Not really, since there was no base to build on, but my longing has increased and hopefully it's never to late. However my appreciation for visual arts, furry and non-furry, has increased and furries are by now my greatest source of new music.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
Non-furries absolutely, I have very good friends offline that I also interact with online a lot but they don't really know about my furry side. It's nice to occasional interact with people that share this particular quirk and I'd like to do so in person eventually.
I was into yaoi before I knew about the fandom, so I used to visit some yaoi forums... one day someone started posting yiff in a thread called ''something cuddly to hug m/m'' or something (it was in spanish). So I fell in love with the furry character design, then I read some furry comics and I found FA like 5 or 6 years ago.
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
I lurked for a few years, and finally made an account 4 years ago (an old account) when I realized that my
love for the fandom wasn't temporary or just a fetish.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
None yet :c
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you draw
I'm still just a lurker, but I love the fandom itself, despite all the drama and some sexually crazed people~
I draw from time to time, but I still don't have enough time to really get into it, so I'm waiting for that moment to start
drawing hxc-mode, since I really love furry art and enjoy drawing it as well.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Yup, at least when I was a kid, then I started seeing it as something childish, but that's over since I joined the fandom, lol.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
Yup, it's been a great inspiration for all kinds of things I've managed to ''create'' over the years
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
Non furs, lots of them. I'm quite antisocial though, so it's not like it matters, I'd prefer being alone most of the time
Back in college, when I had the first internet access that I can remember, where I could really search for ANYTHING. That's when.
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
I lurked for years! Like... 4 or 5?
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
Last Friday, I had dinner with a guy I met here. He's the only furry I've ever met!
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you draw
I draw, but I don't draw porn. Not that I don't like it! :0)
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Yeah. I ALWAYS have. I always drew little wolf characters and stuff. I remember being surprised that this was a "thing".
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
It has increased a lot. I like to draw, but talking to actual GOOD artists, and seeing how they create what they do, has been inspiring.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
With non furries. By a long shot. I just don't know how you meet em?!
I'm tag
For as long as I can remember, i've been into inflation (my memories of which go as far back as age five). At some point along the line though, back when I was first discovering the internet, I stumbled upon the DeviantArt galleries of
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
I lurked for a long time before deciding to get an account. When I finally did get an account, though, I mostly just browsed the pictures and stories. Nowadays though, I'm a bit more social; commenting and the like.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
I ran into
4. What is your level of involvement with the community? Do you draw?
Relatively low; I mostly just explore and comment.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Heck yeah! Alongside my (admittedly major) fascination of werewolves, i've found anthros generally pleasant to look at.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
Not by much...
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
I'm pretty balanced; I spend a lot of time within the fandom, but I also hang out with my local friends on a regular basis.
When I was around ten years old, I was OBSESSED with werewolves. Nothing appealed to me more than shedding my wimpy, chubby shell for the beautiful, powerful beast I felt like inside. So I checked out every book about wolves and werewolves in the school library, and turned my search to the internet. I found the were community and a bunch of werewolf fansites. My searching finally lead me to Yerf, which back then was the SCFA (for those of you who weren't around back then, that stood for the "Squeaky Clean Furry Archive"). I was enthralled with the amazing art and was glad to find out there was an entire group of people drawing the kinds of things I do.
I didn't really know how diverse the fandom was until later, I thought it was just an art thing for a long while.
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
I submitted an application to Yerf every chance I could get. xD When you got rejected, you were allowed to reapply in... six months? A year? Something like that. So I kept trying and kept trying. I had to get special permission from my parents to apply though, they were very strict on my internet activity. So going into chats and forums was completely out of the question. Too bad too, I REALLY wanted to play TLK Muck!
I got permission to post on forums and things in my teens, either that or I just started ignoring their rules, whichever. I was a member of the Yerf Forums when I was 15, a member of YNA around the same age. Got Livejournal when I was 14 or 15 and started following people and communities on there.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
Dragon*Con, some time after I made my first partial suit, so I guess that was 2003. Someone from YNA said she was going, and she saw me at the con in my suit and said hello. I said hi back and wanted to think of something more interesting to say, but all I could think of is "I know you!"
I dunno, I just thought it was really cool to meet an internet person in real life, even if I didn't really know her at all.
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you draw?
Extremely involved, but trying to step back. I am involved in FA, LJ communities, go to conventions, draw, make fursuits, the whole kit and kaboodle.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Oh my, yes! My old school notebooks are full of Lion King, Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes, Road Rovers, Sonic, etc. Really, if I didn't find furry through werewolves, I would have found it through Lion King and Balto, I looked at all those fanpages too.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
I always loved drawing, I vaguely remember realizing I was halfway decent in third grade when suddenly my scribblings started to get positive feedback from classmates. I do know Yerf is directly responsible for my tremendous growth from ages 13-16. I was SO inspired and got a ridiculous amount of constructive critique on the forums, it was great! I was also playing around with all kinds of techniques and mediums, and started to chat online with other artistic people, which was good too.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
My friends used to be almost exclusively furry, but now I keep a good mix, almost half and half, with furries being the larger group.
I was 16 I wanna say, and looking at Lion King porn. I saw a picture that involved a wolf character and that interested me, so I found the artist's website (one Cameron Wolf) and from there discovered that furry was a thing.
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
I lurked for a little while, looked at lots of art work, read some webcomics. I think it was when I first got a myspace account that I started any form of interaction by joining a bunch of furry groups.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
Now, while online I was still fairly reserved and shy, for some reason I saw no reason to not tell people I was furry while in high school. This somehow worked in my favor, as I soon discovered that Klein Oak High School had about a half dozen people who identified as furry, and they were mostly agreeable sorts. My high school best friend was actually the furry I knew best.
4. What is your level of involvement with the community? Do you draw?
I shyly post on here, including my vast array of not even slightly furry artwork, regularly attend FWA, and chat online with a few furry friends. I sometimes draw, but tend to not upload my sparse furry art. I also am doing some writing under a different nom de plume.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Well clearly from my answer to #1, I really liked Lion King. I was also fond of several other anthroe'd animal medias, but few as strongly.
Also, before I had discovered the fandom but after my pubescent hormones had hit, I drew amazingly godawful furry porn.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
I have always had the need to create, and actually for a fairly long time my involvement with the fandom had little to no effect on my creative output. Only rarely would I make anything vaguely furry. In the past few years there's been more furry output from me, but still it doesn't dominate what I do.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
Decidedly more with non-fandom people. I know there is an Austin group, but I have never been to a meet-up. Even the Austin furs I've encountered on fa I have almost never interacted with in the real world. And I'm much too shy to initiate messaging with furs online.
I go on random google/wikipedia/image-search research sessions on random things I come across (yanow, 'surfing the web', going from link to link, learning about stuff) and oneday tried to learn all about what furries are. I became intrigued when I saw an adorable video of fursuiters cuddling and playing Guitar Hero. Afterwards I was drawn to the adorable gay furry webcomics like Closet Coon, Fur-Piled, I.S.O., Circles etc. Before this, all I was reading was classic novels and alternative/literary-seeming comics from the library, so it was a switch. An adorable& satisfying switch.
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
I guess I participated as soon as I could. But It took me awhile to learn what the furry fandom was and to find furaffinity for example. I'm really into forums, speedwriting essay responses to random questions and discussing things on the internet.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
I went to a local furmeet, but I decided I like indirect communication with people in Wisconsin, New York, Seattle, Serbia etc. better. It would be cool to go to AC someday.
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you do draw, write, build costumes, participate in forums, etc.?
I don't do much nowadays. I like uploading things every so-often so people comment on my page and I feel loved, and I lurk like crazy.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Not really. I don't like animals, I like furries. By this point I've learned to appreciate animals. I like wolves/dogs in porn, it works well. And I like anthromorphism as a trope, lens, concept, and for its adorableness.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
Yes. When I found the fandom I began to play the clarinet far less (I'm a music major) and devote alot of attention to learning to draw. And I still love learning to draw. When I started writing for Writer's Craft in grade 12, I got really into a novel I was writing about furries. So I think it also got me into writing.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
I spend much more time on the Internet than in real life, but my real life is rather self-sustaining and the two worlds don't often mesh for me. It would be lovely to meet a local furry I like, but it hasn't happened thusfar.
I'm not entirely sure? I read a lot of anthro comics as a kid in the mid-late eighties, (Usagi Yojimbo, TMNT, Albedo, etc) I probably saw ads for early cons in the back pages. Seeing books like Omaha and Genus left me with no doubt something was going on.
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
I lurked for years. Of course, It was pretty late in the game when I found FA and now IB.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
Sad to say, I've never met another in RL. Working on it. Two decades and more in the furry closet. *shakes head*
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you do draw [edit: oops, unfinished question! I was supposed to ask "Do you draw, write, build costumes, participate in forums, etc.?]
I interact online. That's it.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Oh yeah. All the usual suspects. Robin Hood, Secret of Nimh, Rescuers, aforementioned comics and the Disney Afternoon of the early 90's sealed the deal.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
I write from time to time, but not furry. That may change.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
Much more time with uninvolved friends. I've known too many people who essentially live online, and I am not that guy. I may try to find a local meetup in Seattle, but I would have to keep that secret from non-furry friends. I don't even think they'd judge me harshly, but I couldn't handle it.
It seems like I've always known about it. I think when I was 12 I was flipping through a book called "The Encyclopedia of Cartoon Animals" (or something similar) at a trivia event, and I couldn't put it down. Around that time I found out about it through internet searches, but it seemed like mainly a bunch of immature people who were into anime, a perception that I think to some extent is still true.
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
Haha, I still consider myself a lurker. This is pretty much the first action I've taken on FA in the last couple months. With my drawing and social skills as they are, I feel as if I have nothing really to add to the community for awhile.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
Interestingly enough, I found out that one of my undergraduate colleagues was a furry after I came back for grad school and we started hanging out for the first time. I went to MFF 2011 because it was an hours drive and hey why not, it might be cool, but I don't think I was really ready for that at the time.
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you draw, write, build costumes, participate in forums, etc.?
Unfortunately, not much. I'd like to work on making some more cool friends on FA. I have only very few right now. It's really strange to me that there are people on here that are some of the most interesting and talented people I know of, but also are really friendly and normal (as normal as furry can be). It's like living next door to Jack White; you hardly want to be seen for fear of ruining a potential friendship/seeming uncool in the face of majesty (obviously this is an exaggeration, but one that my mind takes as truth). I do go to streams when time permits, and I'm trying to regain my drawing skills.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Definitely. I've always loved cartoons with anthro characters. Rescue Rangers, Rocko's Modern Life, The Raccoons, the list goes on. I was rarely interested in any cartoon without a furry in it when I was young. The first novels I read were the Redwall series, and I read them constantly. It's a little embarrassing looking back, because they're really not good literature (every book seems the same), and it's probably a big reason I stopped reading for entertainment until recently.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
My drawing has increased quite a bit, but I'm still not up to the level I was at when I was a teen. Life gets in the way a little too often nowadays. When I was 15 or so, I took a drawing class and starting out with no natural talent, progressed at a fairly rapid rate. I was really interested in it. But, it got to the point that I was going to start drawing something furry, which I considered sinful (looooong story). So I stopped drawing for a decade, but I still thought of it a lot. Now that I'm over a lot of that garbage, I'm on FA and more interested in arrrrrrt. So, um, yes.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
I'm not involved with furries as much as I'd like to/should be. I occasionally hang out with that colleague of mine, but not too often. I'm not really used to having purely online relationships, and my IRL social life is pretty acceptable nowadays.
Came across "furry" concept around my 14s, when I was obsessed with beastlike chars from D&D, Warcraft 3 and the like, so with werewolves as well. That lead me to look into anthro art in dA, and came across solidasp's and kuma's stuff, saw all their charming char design and I was delighted. Looking for the "furry" term made my inner fondness for animal cartoon characters explode in full aurora borealis technicolor. Didn't found FA directly though, stepped first into vlc board and furnation beforehand.
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
Lurked for 4 years and a half (plus 2 years outside FA), until last year, when I finally dared to post some stuff at an old account.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
Not bad. First RL contact with another furry was with, not one, but quite a bunch of argentinian furs at a furmeet. I actually went without knowing anyone, not even online, and even then, was quite neat to share the fur as an issue.
What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you do draw [edit: oops, unfinished question! I was supposed to ask "Do you draw, write, build costumes, participate in forums, etc.?]
I do draw, but I'm not very active, and awkwardly shy enough to not talk much to people, or make comments, or even post some works I often end keeping to myself. However, I try my best to keep in contact
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Oooh hohoho! When I was five years old, me and my older bro used to make some kind of "illustrated stories" portraying an anthropomorphized version of our dog and cat, and our neighbour's, "Los perros investigadores", which fought against evil demon cats in a power rangers fashion, obviously in a pretty much nonsense/childish way than it sounds :00000. Besides that, shows with talking creatures always made my heart warm for some reason, like as a child always wanted to have a huge talking critter as a pet and hug it and bff, so i do now.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
I actually BEGIN to draw because of furry. Always thought I was not good enough for making arts, but furry stuff has such an intense itch to be embodied into something, I just needed to try, to tell if I could bring the world in my head to life in one way or another.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
This last year I've been more around furs than non-furs, especially online. Been keeping RL and online contact with
5. ["..so I do now"] I was trying to say either that I still fantasy as I did as a child, or that I can now "bring them to life" in a sort of way, through arts, but I should have reformulated the phrase.
4. more than "keep in contact" I was going to write "getting involved more actively", but I got distracted.
Also, an obvious reason to be shy is these kind of language mistakes I make often.
also, hilarious misleading hyperlinks, courtesy of link structure copy-paste
Kinda of a two-parter. In the mid 90's, I was heavily involved in the self publishing underground scene, interacting with many cartoonists. There was a zine called Comics F/X, which covered the scene, as well as reviewed a lot of the comics being produced. In one issue there was a review of Circe's Funhouse by
Fast forward to 2001, which was the first time that I had regular access to the internet. In the course of looking up stuff, I found Circe's Funhouse online as well as Transfur. I wound up striking up a correspondence with
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
My lurking didn't last long, it wasn't soon after I struck up a friendship with
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
That was
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you do draw [edit: oops, unfinished question! I was supposed to ask "Do you draw, write, build costumes, participate in forums, etc.?]
My participation is art, comics,and fursuiting.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
SHIT YEAH. Snoopy is practically my patron saint. Other people slept with teddy bears. Snoopy was/is my number one bro. I would always love to pretend play as animals with friends. My first 'fursona' was more than likely a bluejay (I had written a story as a kid that I was a bluejay and flew to school with my schoolbag in my talons) I was always wired to like transformations, witness one of my early drawings: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1875016/
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
It's pretty much the same. I was drawing for quite some time. Drawing the anthropomorphics is my preferred method.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom? I guess I spend more time with people that happen to be furries. I really don't go to furmeets much anymore, because they don't offer me anything particularly special anymore. I wind being the oldest person there by a long gap in years (unless their parents are there), and I prefer hanging out with people that are more mature. At least at conventions, there's a few people that i can relate to.
Around 1995, my sister brought home an issue of Albedo, and there was an ad for Mailbox Books inside. I was familiar with Eric Schwartz animations and Andrew Powell from my Amiga days, but back then I didn't know there was a fandom.
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
I ordered comics through Mailbox Books, but didn't know any other furries personally. Eventually I went to college and got online (using Mosaic), and almost immediately got a page on FurNation. I posted most of my early comic strips from my high school years.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
Thanks to my mail order comics, I got in contact with tegerio and submitted some stuff to his fanzine, though I didn't meet him personally until years later. My first convention was Anthrocon 96, but the only person I met there that I actually knew was, amazing, Eric Schwartz. The first furry I really knew in person was Vulpsturm (who has long since left the fandom). He, Tegerio, and I went together to my second convention.
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you do draw [edit: oops, unfinished question! I was supposed to ask "Do you draw, write, build costumes, participate in forums, etc.?]
Yep, I draw... about once a month or less. I've pretty much given up on drawing to do other things. I visit FA and DA every day, and IB on occasion, and post lots of comments and messages. I don't chat whatsoever. I get A LOT of commissions.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Hell yeah! My first experience was reading Pogo in my grandmother's newspaper, and I've been hooked ever since. Even though Pogo was more funny animal than furry, I always liked and drew anthro stuff, and leaned towards slice-of-life and sitcom humor than cartoon plots. I drew a lot on my Amiga computer using only a mouse. I started drawing porn when I was 10, and ended up shredding almost all of it out of embarrassment just a few years before I found out about the fandom. Today I mostly do soap-opera and dark humor... and hire artists to draw my art for me. ;)
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
Yep. I submit to a few fanzines, and my comics flourished in my college/convention years. Post college my output has slowly withered away. I wouldn't say I'm bored of the fandom, but rather, I just don't enjoy drawing. I'm still very active in the fandom, but not very creative.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
Online, all the time. Offline, never. I don't have any furry friends IRL. I do occasionally go to conventions, but I spend most of my time attending panels and in the dealer room. To me, furry is all about the art. I don't like drama or gossip, and I read very few comics these days, so there's not much for me to talk about with other furries.
On the other, I am pleased to find that I'm not the only one for whom werewolves were a gateway drug.
Anyway, there's this over here: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3373101/
I blame
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
Lurked for a long time, mostly on FA. I never really felt the need to participate until I started developing my own artistic skills. I became more active around 2010, since I finally felt I had something to contribute/give back. Discovering some really cool people in the fandom also made me want to participate more.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
Not met any IRL. I suspect furries as a cohesive cultural phenomenon are primarily a US/UK thing so anyone falling outside that area is gonna be pretty isolated unless they're willing to travel a lot. I also don't really feel the need to seek out furries specifically since I personally view furry stuff as an art movement rather than a lifestyle - it'd be like attending a gathering of cubists or neo-impressionists. Art alone isn't enough to build a rapport.
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you do draw [edit: oops, unfinished question! I was supposed to ask "Do you draw, write, build costumes, participate in forums, etc.?]
I draw, and that's pretty much it. It's where my talents lay.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Yup, mostly thanks to a steady feed of cartoons and comics from Disney.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
I find it easier and more inspiring to draw stuff for FA than other, non-furry sites - making an account here did increase my productivity (slightly). Compared to other art sites, FA feels like it has a greater sense of community, tolerance and inclusivity, so it's more fun to contribute. It just feels... I dunno, friendlier.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
Offline, all non-furry. I suspect the amount of furries in my country is truly miniscule. Online I'm more of a lurker than a participator as purely online relations are a bit of a mystery to me. I guess I don't really seek out or avoid people based on whether or not they happen to be furry - it's a non-issue for me.
1. I always knew in the back of my mind that it existed, but after channelsurfing into Jimmy Kimmel Live covering anthrocon like 8 years ago, I decided that one day... one day... that will be me LoL
2. I didn't actively pursue the fandom until I found
3. Local Fargo bowling meet with 5 other furry strangers. I decided to throw caution to the wind and jump right in after joining FA. Everyone was really nice :3
4. I don't draw. I kinda organize local furmeets now and try to bring people to meets to meet other furries. I fursuit and attend a few conventions.
5. Totally :D
6. No, I still can't draw. Tho' I do want to get into music and glowstringing more. Tho' that was always the case. I'm slowly trying things now.
7. Since I moved 600 miles from home, more with furries. They are pretty much my new family now that I'm far away from old nonfurry friends and family. I still love everyone. This is just how things worked out
Hope you enjoy
1. How did you discover this fandom?
It was the spring of my sophomore year in highschool. I can’t remember if it was the first thing I saw, but I think I was looking through some “funny pictures” collection that I had come across through 4chan. One of them was of a bunny bent over with jean short shorts on, looking seductively at the viewer. From there I did a few google searches I think, which brought me to the old taurin-fox and black teagen portfolio sites. From there I soon found a forum where I created an account, which also happened to be the first place where I acknowledged the idea that I might be bisexual or even gay. I stayed there, undercover as an underager for a year or two, then made the switch to FA at some point. I didn’t really get too invested in that until my freshman year in college.
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
When I first joined a forum (F2F or furrytofurry, if anyone remembers!) I would post occasionally and read a lot. I gained a few quick semi-close net friends, and a boyfriend whom I kept in touch with a lot through the site.
In my senior year of high school I mostly disappeared from the fandom, and didn’t really get back into it until I decided to begin my documentary. If I hadn’t taken up the project, I’m not sure if I would still be here.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
In my last year of high school I went to a small Anime con (setsucon), there I saw two fursuiters, Kotto and Dakota-Malamute. I was wearing a deer tail and antlers (god knows what my excuse/justification for that was), and I nervously asked if they had FAs. They did, and they were Penn State Students. We got in contact once, and I even went to a furry Penn State movie night. We watched eraserhead of all things, and it turned out to be a pretty strange night for me. Harmless, but not unlike one’s first experimental gay experience when very young, full of shame, self-alienation and fear of being found out.
4. What is your level of involvement with the community? Do you draw, write, build costumes, participate in forums, etc.?
I am a photographer/artist trying to sort out what I find interesting about the fandom. It is my belief that though the furry fandom is centered around an interest so seemingly insignificant and far off from the common human experience, there is something incredibly fascinating going on in it. It goes beyond just what the subject matter is, but I don’t think it can be accurately talked about without full understanding (or trying to understand) the fandom in its specifics. (does that make sense?)
I never quite know what to call myself in relation to the fandom. When people ask me if I am a furry now, I usually say I am “one foot in, one foot out”. That certainly hasn’t always been the case, but I think nowadays I have really gotten enough distance/awareness of myself that I can analyse what I see and experience, while still enjoying and participating in the conversations. I now do have trouble identifying with a single character, which I somewhat lement, but I think that might be the price of my new point of view. I am able to enjoy characters, even identify in a broader sense with some (I will never get tired of deer jokes), but I have mentally secured position in the fandom as really just myself, Tommy the funny guy with a camera.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
As expressed by others, I know that I did have a fondness for animal characters, but nothing so extreme or obvious. Oddly enough, I have distinct memories of always choosing the Khajiit or aragonian (those are both in the spellcheck dictionary????!!!) races in Morrowind, and I think in other videogames my preference leaned similarly.
Since joining though, I have gained such a different appreciation for cartoon animal characters, and I greatly enjoy noticing them wherever I go. On bags of cheesepuffs, in car commercials, in graffiti. I also now get about 10x happier whenever I see someone walking a cute dog down the street. Adverse effects: none.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
YES. This is something that is actually kind of strange to talk about. I started taking photos around the same time I joined a forum, what’s more is I would post them up asking what people thought, and it was this feedback and attention that I think really started me thinking about art. (To recap: my coming out in sexuality AND the beginning of my artistic practice are both very deeply/murkily connected to the fandom. I will never be the subject of any artist biographies.)
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
I’d say I probably spent more time with friends here just in hours. But counting the fact that almost everyone I know these days is aware of my deep involvement in the fandom, I never feel too far from it. If I got paid for the amount of time I spent thinking about furries and my documentary I’d have a full time job. I am a very social being, and I am pretty sure I am also one of the luckiest guys on the planets. I have found amazing friends here at school as well as the wonderful people I have found through the fandom, and I have no doubt in my mind that the two groups can and would integrate seamlessly.
I was about 12 or 13 and was watching MTV late at night while on vacation, when Sex2K came on. It was the furry episode. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3NQ7D24Pqw I was instantly drawn to
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
As soon as I got home I immersed myself in whatever furry art I could find. I quickly found sites like VCL, Pureyiff, Macrophile, as well as chatrooms like The Furry Haven on WinMX and The Furry Forest on Yahoo. At first my understanding of my obsession with anthros was limited, so I didn't know where to turn or how to express my urges. But as the years grew I became more and more savvy with the workings of the furry community. I was a lurker, just another fan of artists like Wolf Kidd, Ken Sample, Teaselbone, Doug Winger, Robert Hill, Spunky, Eric Schwartz, Arphalia, Kilcodo, etc. It wasn't until about 6 years later in 2007 that I decided to get in touch with the people I had admired for all that time.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
Probably in 2006-2007 that I attended a small Orlando-area furmeet with Antimon, Yappyfox, and some other Central Florida furries. It was very odd and I felt out of place. Since then I've never felt at home in the furry community, it is merely a means to an end for me. I've been to several furry conventions since then and my opinion hasn't changed. I just use the opportunity to see people I wouldn't otherwise be able to visit, and to get art that would normally be difficult to get all at once. Other than that I just get out as fast as I can. Fursuits make me uncomfortable.
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you do draw [edit: oops, unfinished question! I was supposed to ask "Do you draw, write, build costumes, participate in forums, etc.?]
Near the end of 2007 I came up with the idea of Dickbitch Molly as a parody, based on EXL's Poodle avatar that had the only moving tongue on Second Life, Doug Winger's Pandora character, and the things I thought were wrong/humorous in the furry fetish community. By this time I had already made friends with most of the people I had admired from afar, and as this new character grew into an actual persona, my involvement grew along with her widespread appeal.
Since then I have been fairly involved, but more as a means to obtain fetish material and amuse myself and my friends at the expense of others. Over the years I've cultivated an online persona that may or may not be accurate, and I am pleased with the feedback I've gotten from people; equally negative and positive. It still tickles me when people say "Dickbitch Molly". Over the past year I think I've calmed down with the misanthropy (get it?) and realized the furry fandom holds little for me except as a cursory hobby and a means to get interesting anthro genre-based art/erotica.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
I had a tongue fetish before I found out about the furry fandom, but I didn't realize it until I found out about furries. Besides that, anthros had just been another art genre to me.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
No, I've always been creative.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
I have more furry friends due to the fact we share similar tastes in art and erotica. I try to keep my real-life and "fetish life" separate, but I feel more at ease with my furry friends considering they are generally more understanding of me and my fetishes.
Discovery docu I saw at 15('08) had some therianthropes and furries in it. It was interesting because I was obsessed with animals, but very weird to me.
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
I had a brief stint as a scaly a year later, but I didn't realize they were basically furries. Then I stopped and just hated furries in general for a while. Started back up in may '11. Probably won't go back.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
A school mate of mine in the 12th grade. He's more of the colorful disneyish feral kind of furry. It helped me decide to become a furry again.
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you do draw [edit: oops, unfinished question! I was supposed to ask "Do you draw, write, build costumes, participate in forums, etc.?] I don't draw very well, but I have a suit and attend cons.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
Kind of. Not specifically.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
Yes, yes I did. It got me into finer art forms.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
Roughly half. It helps that I have turned people into furries.
1. How did you discover this fandom?
In the early 90's while living in LA I discovered a zine about zines called Factsheet 5ive, all they did was to list and review zines. So I decided I'd try putting together a collection of my erotic drawings (xeroxed of course!) and send a copy to Factsheet 5ive where it might get a little exposure and catch the eye of other people interested in that sort of thing. Sure enough I got a couple of orders, one from a guy in S California with whom I had a short friendly correspondence by mail (hi David if you're reading this!) He suggested I send some art to furry zines - something I hadn't known existed until he mentioned them - so I did (Furball, Ten Furcent...remember those!?) This was still years before the internet of course. In one of his letters he asked me if I was going to attend Confurence, the big furry convention in Anahiem. I had never heard of Confurence and that was the first time I saw the word "furry" used in that sense, but I said "yes" and a few years later in 1995 made it to CF6, and thus discovered "the fandom" and the fandom discovered me :) Actually the first person to contact me after having seen the mention in Factsheet 5ive and to order a copy of my xeroxed drawings was vulnavia.
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
Participated immediately. I'd been drawing that stuff all my life and suddenly here was an eager audience. It was quite a pleasant surprise for me, I was not too sure many folks would care for the overweight, sloppy critters I loved to draw; because in those days the male critters in those zines were pretty exclusively of either the muscular or slender "willowy" type.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
That would have been when I attended ConFurence 6, which was in 1995. I didn't know a single person there but enjoyed strolling about and taking it all in. In 1996 at CF7 I met torrle who is still a pal though we only see other about once every 5 years :)
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you draw
I have been drawing all my life, attend furry cons at least once a year since 1995, and started fursuiting in 2007 and love that too. I absolutely love being a part of this crazy thing.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
No I LOVED them, ever since I can remember. Earliest memories of feeling strongly about them would be around 1965 when I was 8 years old.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
No, actually I started drawing less! Even so, my obsession with anthropomorphic critters is just as deep and as magic as it ever was, maybe moreso.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
I'm very busy as a musician/songwriter/sound engineer, working in my garden, etc, so I don't really have what I'd call "leisure time", but if I did, I'd be glad to hang out with furs if there were any around here way out in the countryside in this obscure corner of Southern France! I do attend furry cons at least once a year and always have a fantastic time, love every minute of 'em!
Well, I have been in transformation fiction since middle school, transformation art as well, naturally, and I found some art by
2. Did you participate as soon as you could, or did you "lurk" for a while? If so, how long?
I have an another account, not associated with any identity, that I used to look at art for 2 years. I didn't socialize with anyone on this account, so last year, I decided to make a new start in the fandom, made the redapeguy account and started socializing.
3. What was your first contact with another furry in person?
I've never met a furry in person. I'm still pretty new to this!
4. What is you level of involvement with the community? Do you draw, write, build costumes, participate in forums, etc?
I commission art and socialize with lots of people in the fandom, that's all, for now.
5. Did you like anthropomorphic animals before you found out about the fandom?
I thought they were pretty neat, but I didn't have a strong attachment to them.
6. Did you begin creative activity (drawing, painting, writing, music, etc.) or greatly increase your creative activity after finding the fandom?
I've started writing more than I used to, but still not very much.
7. Counting both online and offline interactions, do you spend more leisure time with furries, or with friends not involved in the fandom?
Mostly furries now, I recently moved and don't know anyone in the area, so most of my interactions are with people I met recently in the fandom online.
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3439570/