A criticism I've seen of many furry writing is the basic 'why furry? ' One might expect this criticism to come from outside the fandom, but I've seen it a lot from within the furry writing scene. One must justify having furry characters instead of just humans.

This question has bogged me down in the past. One big reason I've been so haphazard on getting things finished and posted is I worry too much about making them perfect. And this has been one sticking point. In stories I've managed to finish I've swept the issue under the rug saying it's okay to not have this for now, but I'd have to work it out if I'm to be taken seriously as a furry author.

Over the past year I've had the important realization that the whole mess of worrying about 'why furry' is horseshit (apologies to equines for the metaphor). The problem is in-fiction justifications of things are just facades for the real reason for the furry: I want to imagine tiger people boning. Any explanation is just a convoluted and obvious cover up of that fact.

There are really only two not in-fiction reasons for having animal characters, other than just 'because I want to.' One is using animal species as a metaphor for various human differences (which 99 times out of 100 it's race). The other is your juxtaposing furries against humans to make some point about humanity. And while that has its place, it's not really what I'm going for. So the bottom line is I'm just plain owning it. I write furry because I like furry.

Now, that said, I also like convoluted explanations of things. So there are still going to be in-fiction reasons for everything. I hope to do more journals on worldbuilding stuff that focuses on that sort of split. Some world building thing, the in-fiction justification, and the actual me explanation for why I make it that way.