To normies, I introduce myself as someone who learned English from court documents and it lead to who I am today. That's a lie.

I stumbled across 兽人吧 when I was 11 and it all went downhill from there.

Back then, besides the few early artists charting their own waters (many are still active today!), furry media were few and far between. Brave souls would dive into the foreign lands of Pixiv and DA, retrieving caches of "sauce" then share them with the hungry crowd. The language barriers were immense, but that's the nature of early internet adopters. The one website with a special place was FA. Because it's a *furry* website. Furry is in the name. It was the first result when you searched "furry website" and I hope it still is.

And so, against the better judgement of myself, I managed to piece together enough information to register for an FA account. This website isn't user friendly now. Imagine 12 years ago. But I was greeted with the same sight an FA user would now: a boundless ocean of art. It opened my eyes about what is possible in this community - from a small forum of a few hundred active users to a vast network of critters around the world, making furry media in their own ways, finding identities and forging friendships. A few days later, I finessed enough of the English language to figure out the toggle NSFW button. Oops. And the rest was history. 13 years as a furry. 10 years lurking without a fursona. I moved to Canada, switched allegiance from the Chinese fandom to the English fandom somewhere in between, then re-established ties only last year. FA is the one constant throughout all of this.

Now the furry communities around the world are firmly entrenched in corporate social media spaces. There's nothing wrong with that, but the precarity is always here. DA had one redesign that killed its furry community, Pixiv is somehow more insulated today than it was in 2012, every other pic on 微博 ends up removed by censorship, Tumblr banned everything, and Twitter... well we all know what happened. Amidst all of this, FA is the one website standing strong as a forever beacon of the community. I simply cannot imagine where furries would be without this website.

This is the one place where furries from all over the planet can get together. No borders, no barriers. Except for the text codes I guess.

So yeah. Thank you, rest in peace, and stay strong.



(Hey look it's my first FA journal ever! In true FA fashion I had to look up how to post a journal...)