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Anthrocon Anecdote
10 years ago
General
This sort of ties into my previous post on Subculture and Furry Fandom. This is an anecdote related to me by SueDeer at a dinner at an Anthrocon many years ago, but I thought it was pretty interesting and telling, in regards to our fandom.
A couple of professional writer guests of Anthrocon were hanging out together at one point during the convention, discussing the convention and fandom going on around them. At one point, one of the authors asked the other "But what are they fans of?"
The reply he got was something along the lines of "As far as I can tell, they're basically fans of each other, there's no single binding element or medium aside from "furries", which makes them kind of unusual compared to other fandoms."
That anecdote has stuck with me all this time, because the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was true; I am or have been involved in a lot of fandoms, and I'm hard-pressed to think of any one of them where the majority of the content the fandom was about, did not come from an outside source. Furry seems to be pretty unique in that the majority of what the fandom is about, the fandom produces itself. Certainly the fandom *started* with outside sources, but it seems like it evolved pretty rapidly to the point where it was its own resource.
The how and why of *that* evolution, I'll leave to brighter minds and a different time!
A couple of professional writer guests of Anthrocon were hanging out together at one point during the convention, discussing the convention and fandom going on around them. At one point, one of the authors asked the other "But what are they fans of?"
The reply he got was something along the lines of "As far as I can tell, they're basically fans of each other, there's no single binding element or medium aside from "furries", which makes them kind of unusual compared to other fandoms."
That anecdote has stuck with me all this time, because the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was true; I am or have been involved in a lot of fandoms, and I'm hard-pressed to think of any one of them where the majority of the content the fandom was about, did not come from an outside source. Furry seems to be pretty unique in that the majority of what the fandom is about, the fandom produces itself. Certainly the fandom *started* with outside sources, but it seems like it evolved pretty rapidly to the point where it was its own resource.
The how and why of *that* evolution, I'll leave to brighter minds and a different time!
I didn't have the heart to enlighten him, when he was so obviously clueless.
Furry is in general a more 'creative' fandom than many others. We all tend to have our own ideas of furry 'worlds', we don't restrict ourselves to one particular writers' 'world'.
We aren't fans of one particular Sci-Fi movie of TV show, we're fans of the entire concept of sentient non-human creatures.
Where I have found parallels is in the meeting of actual creators. One comic convention I got to for a few years tried to attract small-pressers and self-publishers, along with writers and artists representing the big names. The convention wasn't just about one thing, it was about anything 'fantasy fiction'.
Over a few bheers some of the top industry people commented on how much they liked having intelligent and challenging conversations about their characters, plot lines and worlds with fans and other creators, instead of some larger more themed conventions where the fans just seemed to collect signatures like hero-worshiping sheep.
I believe Furry isn't one thing because we all have our own ideas about how a furry world might have evolved. We often think quite deeply on our 'personal furry' characters and their backgrounds, we attend conventions almost as the human avatars of our own characters. The fact that one person has attained commercial success with their projects isn't a barrier to us in approaching them and asking them about their ideas or the writers / artists who influenced their work.
We are not fans of furry, we are instead collectively Furry.
(Sergio Aragones was a guest at the 2nd Victoria International Cartoon Festival back in 1986; I can't recall for sure if Mark was there as well that year, but Mark often travels with Sergio, and there were lots of copies of DNAgents about.)
It's a much more decentralized fandom than most others, with a fairly high percentage of semi-pros and ascended fans making things. Lower than it used to be, but still there, and there's a lot more impetus to contribute than in many other fandoms.
It's probably for the best that furries aren't actually an -ism, though. We get enough crap for taking this too seriously as it is. :V
FWIW, I think the fandom being forced to produce all of the content it consumes also causes it to value OC, original content, original characters, and original concepts, more than other fandoms. That's why "furry commissions" are a thing, but "star wars commissions" are not.