You did not make your body nor did you design it.  Your body was given to you.  The shape or form of your body does not determine who you are, that is up to you.  With regard to your body, you usually play the role of caretaker for it.  Some will honor you because of the body that you possess, some will dishonor you.   What other people do is their own concern.  Just as what you do is your own concern. 
 
You have limited influence over how people react to your body.
You have strong influence over what you choose do about their reactions to your body. 
 
The moment between what you feel and what you do is the moment of choice.  You may feel hurt or joy at the actions of others.  You do not control that step.  You control the next step. You control what you do with that hurt or joy.  Do you take the hurt and try to generate more hurt?
 
You can find value in honoring the hurt you feel, being with it, and respecting it as a companion, but there is little value in blindly and thoughtlessly seeking to add more hurt to this world just because you feel it.  Don’t throw away the power in that moment of choice, Use It. 
 
Use the power in that moment to decide what you will become as a human being.  Use it to create yourself anew in that moment.  Use it to free yourself from the past and call forth the best in you.
 
When the time is right you can even use that moment of choice to serve something greater than yourself. If you do that then you can begin to discover more and more about who you really are.  You may discover that you are much more than your body.

To my furry brothers and sisters, 

I saw Kung Fu Panda today and I was amazed!   This is as fine an anthropomorphic fantasy movie as we are likely to see in many years. If you have not seen it, then go and see it. If you have already seen in then go and see it again! It is that good. I am serious. This one is for us. This is a gift for all furries, let's accept it with deep gratitude and joy. I believe that this movie has the opportunity to fuel the anthropomorphic imagination in many minds and it could help awaken the furry sleeping inside some people.

I must admit that I went into the movie with some doubts. The commercials did a lot to emphasize Jack Black and I find that with his performances a little goes a long way. All of those doubts evaporated in the first few seconds of the film. A beautiful and highly stylized opening draws the audience into the fantasy with startling speed and power. Things move as a more modest pace soon after the first sequence but it successfully foreshadows a bit of everything that follows. It is as the jewel in the lotus reflecting ten-thousand worlds. The movies makes excellent use of Jack Black's characterization integrating it into the story and succeeds at keeping it in proper service to the story.

Overall they had a good balance of presence and transparency for the voice acting. In some characters the voice leads the character yet in others the voice actor disappears and we see only the character. I like this as the voice acting could easily get in the way of the character without careful planning. They used very sophisticated planning for this one. For instance they made excellent use of Jack Black and David Cross as voices who formed the core of their characters. While Dustin Hoffman and Angelina Jolie became transparent in their roles which worked very well.

The movie displays phenomenal beauty. They make excellent use of the generally simple character frames. The textures impress me with each new CG movie that I see and this movie continues with that tradition. The fights are beyond amazing. This may feature some of the best depictions of Kung Fu combat ever. The ability to make character pause and hover in mid move is the fulfillment of a kung fu movie maker's dream. The deft use of meaningfully shifting camera angles puts me in awe of their visual imagination. The physics are superb and better than life because in the animated format they can make physics better match our internalized version of intuitive physics. Their amazing acrobatic moves just felt very pleasing overall.

Also the plot is full of fun, challenges and meanings. Many of the characters have wonderful and satisfying arcs. Many of them must struggle to overcome their doubts. They struggle well and with much right effort they all learn something important. The writing is tight and nothing gets wasted so that everything connects well and serves a purpose.

This movie is full of great things that all add value and all work well together. If you don' t see this one in the theater you will be kicking yourself later. Go and see it, you will thank yourself for it.

We all have an interest in anthropomorphic animals. Sometimes we envision them as animal beings with shapes moving closer towards those of human beings. Other times we envision them as human being with shapes moving closer towards those of animal beings. No matter the direction, we all share an interest in their blended forms. Many of us have an endless fascination with these anthropomorphic forms and that interest only deepens over the years. We can also participate in fellowship based on this shared interest.

Anthropomorphic forms often inspire us to create beauty. Now that does not necessarily involve creating art, but it can. In order to make sense of this idea we may need to remap a few concepts. When we talk about beauty what are we talking about?

We could map beauty to the object and consider beauty as one of the properties of that object. Yet not everyone finds exactly the same objects beautiful all of the time. So perhaps that does not serve as the best way to understand beauty.

We could map beauty to the subject. “Beauty is in the eye is the beholder.” Yet this again may fail to describe beauty, for the viewer alone does not hold all of beauty inside and merely send it forth arbitrarily.

Instead of those maps consider that beauty functions as a combination of subject and object. When the subject views the object both of them together create a new affect. Working mutually the subject and the object both create beauty. Remove the subject or the object and the phenomenon called ‘beauty’ disappears.

We can participate in fellowship because we share an ability to create beauty in much the same way. Similar images inspire many of us to create beauty. The symbolmakers offers inspiration for our own act of creation. The same kinds of forms inspire us all to create the beauty affect.

We sometime take it that the object moves us. Yet only by acting together with the object can we bring that motion into being. We are participants in that process. We create beauty with interaction; we can find beauty in the action between the subject and the object.

The symbolmakers needs the audience just as the audience needs the symbolmakers in order to create endless beauty. We all do well to treasure the symbolmakers for the hard work they do to create a greater potential for beauty to exist in this world.

Historically a shaman would wear an animal skin in part to gain a bit of the power from that animal.  A furry, in effect, wears a cartoon animal skin.  A cartoon overall is a simplified representation.  As a simplified representation a cartoon often holds greater symbolic power than a realistic representation. 

I recently overheard the phrase, “we use anthropomorphic characters as symbols of ourselves.”  Yet these are not symbols of our everyday selves.   As symbols they must represent another level of self.  People do not just design their characters to more abstractly represent their bodies; instead we each unify a simplified representation of ourselves with the simplified representation of an animal. We connect a symbol of ourself with an animal symbol.  We could also describe this as strengthening the connection between our spiritual self and an animal spirit.  This shows one of the key functions of anthropomorphic animals; they remind us of the deep kinship between animals and people.  Anthropomorphic creation involves recognizing this kinship; to find the animal qualities in human beings, to find the human qualities in animal beings and to find a common ground where we all stand together.

This can feel difficult or sometimes even absurd as so many people take it for granted that a vast chasm separates human beings from animal beings. It goes against the grain for someone to identify with animals too closely. The official hierarchy placed human being far above animal beings, and grants that animals cannot become closer to humanity, so to be closer to an animal one must lower oneself. Yet this gloss ignores the greater complexity that some of the greatest and most human traits, such a love and loyalty are equally if not even more prominently achieved by some animal beings. The divide between human beings and animal beings might not seem so wide if we can develop a bridge across that gap. Animal beings deserve respect just as all human being do too. We all have value.

I attended the Rocky Mountain Fur Con this weekend in my hometown of Denver, Colorado. As you can see I took many, many pictures. I only wish I had an opportunity to take more even photographs of all the beautiful fursuits. (Many fursuiters could be very shy or elusive those days)

This was my first furry convention and I do not yet know the names of a lof ot the fursuits and fursuiters, but I am learning. Any help that you furs can give me with identificaiton is very welcome and most appreciated. Thanks, Xander

My breath is stolen by the Art of Zen
Longingly drawn out, bodies extended
Basking, adoring, again and again
Each creation joyously attended

To worship them with reckless abandon
in the blissful imagination space
Beauty that you long to get your hands on
An intimate encounter, face to face

They will mesmerize, with hypnotic eyes
Some happy, bold, or else secret, alone
Such deftly and oh, so godly shaped thighs
All, having power to make your lust moan

Each delectable paw, lanky torso
As much bliss as the last, only more so