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Random observations Part 1
16 years ago
The first in a series of observations I've come to after wading through the furry fandom for years. There will be plenty of "No Shit, Sherlock" moments I'm sure, but I don't have anything better to do with this journal.
Part One: Species, aka "'African or European?' 'Wha... I don't know'"
Most furs pick canine and feline species for their character(s). Nothing new there. But what I've noticed is that about 85% of the time, people are content to pick a type of animal and leave it at that. When I created my fursona, Zerry, I was content to say he was just "a chameleon". But when I started getting art of him from friends, he was depicted as having everything from crests to horns, stuff that didn't fit my mental image of him. Turns out "chameleon" was a bit too general a description for a group of animals who varied widely in appearance. For the sake of visual reference I conferred with the great Google, and found that the panther chameleon was closest to how I envisoned Zerry. Even then it wasn't a perfect fit, so I made him 1/4 green anole to make up for it.
How many furs out there can say they've done the same kind of research? Why are so many just content to name a generic animal ("Fox", "wolf", "tiger", "rabbit" etc), when picking a specific species gives the fursona that much more distinction? It seems when a fur wants to make their character "distinctive", they often settle for garish colors or throwing something like dragons and demons into the mix. Then you get people making up weird shit like General Rain and attract followers/copycats wanting to jump on the novelty bandwagon. Is the majority of the fandom just content with following the general trend instead of putting their imaginations and a zoology text to use?
I dunno. What do you think?
Part One: Species, aka "'African or European?' 'Wha... I don't know'"
Most furs pick canine and feline species for their character(s). Nothing new there. But what I've noticed is that about 85% of the time, people are content to pick a type of animal and leave it at that. When I created my fursona, Zerry, I was content to say he was just "a chameleon". But when I started getting art of him from friends, he was depicted as having everything from crests to horns, stuff that didn't fit my mental image of him. Turns out "chameleon" was a bit too general a description for a group of animals who varied widely in appearance. For the sake of visual reference I conferred with the great Google, and found that the panther chameleon was closest to how I envisoned Zerry. Even then it wasn't a perfect fit, so I made him 1/4 green anole to make up for it.
How many furs out there can say they've done the same kind of research? Why are so many just content to name a generic animal ("Fox", "wolf", "tiger", "rabbit" etc), when picking a specific species gives the fursona that much more distinction? It seems when a fur wants to make their character "distinctive", they often settle for garish colors or throwing something like dragons and demons into the mix. Then you get people making up weird shit like General Rain and attract followers/copycats wanting to jump on the novelty bandwagon. Is the majority of the fandom just content with following the general trend instead of putting their imaginations and a zoology text to use?
I dunno. What do you think?
I also generally am kinda sympathetic towards the crowd that feel it necessary to have demonic/angelic/draconic heritage, because I've encountered many of the same difficulties in other areas. For example, elves, in D&D. Most people just leave it at "He's an elf." despite the fact that there are a number of subsets of the race, and within those tend to be radically different mentalities ranging from 'stern parent towards short lived races' to 'why do we let these silly mon-keigh run around unchecked?' A character is quite literally his life history, just as a human being is. When you rely on an artificial means to generate your character's personality, your character comes across as artificial. He's just another "Fox-Dragon hybrid" rather than, say "General Lord Ferros of the Iron Castle" which was where you had WANTED to go with him.
I think part of the issue is some furs finding out the hard way how much variety there really is in the animal kingdom. I didn't even know how many kinds of squirrel there were until looking a little further (after being spurred on by the ones in Animaniacs). Yet some folks think 'squirrel' covers everything.
And for the record ... red fox/striped skunk mix.
Or they might have a unique fur pattern. Someday, characters will just have a series of designs drawn on them and it'll be difficult to tell what they're supposed to be.