I’ve debated whether I needed to write something like this for a while, but given the number of people asking me (on my ask.fm) if I ever plan on fursuiting, what I think of it, or general type things like that, I’ve decided to just write one long boring answer as opposed to three or four little dull answers.

In short, no, I do not like fursuiting.

This is not to say this is an attack on those that do, by all means do what you want to do; I don't think any more or less about someone because they fursuit any more than I'd look down on someone for eating Marmite sandwiches. Indeed, many people I know and respect are fursuiters themselves (which I know sounds a bit like "I'm not racist, I have a black friend" but stick with me) but this is just my personal feelings towards it. I don’t like pretending. I never have. There’s a picture of me, age 4, sulking like all hell because someone’s dressed me up as Postman Pat for a play I didn't want to do. Acting, pretending to be someone else, it’s always just made me itchy – like I’m lying or being deceitful. Now, while I may have an over-active imagination, I don't spend any much time pretending I'm somebody else. It's why my fursona is just me as a wolfdog, and it’s also incidentally why I dislike books written in the first person, and monologues in films.

So that – and mild claustrophobia that’d most likely be exacerbated by wearing a large polystyrene head - is why I don’t like the idea of me personally fursuiting, but surely I don’t mind being around them, right?

Actually, no – I don’t, and for similar reasons to the reason I don’t want to do it myself. Firstly, 9/10 I don’t know who the person on the inside is. I’m a people person, I love chatting to people about everything and nothing, and someone who can’t/won’t talk back becomes nothing but a colourful annoyance to me very quickly. And the second is a personal quibble, which is that in the very few occasions I've been around fursuiters, there’s always been this kind of “everyone drop what you’re doing, the fursuiter part has started” element to proceedings that I kind of resent not being able to be the cause of. Also the same reason I envy strippers and astronauts. They turn heads I myself am incapable (and rather unwilling to pay thousands of pounds I could otherwise spend on a beer, drugs, and a car) of turning.

So there you go. A little social quirk- phobia-jealousy soufflé of reasons why I don’t like fursuiting.

Please stop asking me about it.