Why am I a furry?
My relation to furry media:
I never paid much attention to furry shit in general most of my life, say I started really getting into art when I was about 16 and even then. Most times I encountered anything related I treated it with the same contempt I treat bronies or homestuck fans, a punching bag for the normies and a weird cousin you get to talk to in Christmas meetings as an artist.
Not to say I avoided furry media, especially as a kid, but things like crash bandicoot, spyro the dragon and the goofy movie don’t really count as such in my head, they where retroactively adopted by the community and not necessarily made by them. Plus when you’re young you don’t think about shit like that.
It wasn't till much later that I began to seek furry aspects in art thanks to some important works in addition to some philosophical issues.
When did it click, important works:
I find it hard to pin point what piece of art began this interest, I assume I was predisposed to it, as an edgy teenager that hated everyone his age, and felt cool when he could make them feel just as alienated as he felt towards them, a gay teenager in fact, important factor as well.
That same predisposition that led me to 70s exploitation films down the road is exactly what brought me to fall in love with *that* idiot, he who fought many a good man and laid many a good women, Fritz the cat, baby.
That 73’ film made a much, much larger impact to my life than what the scope of this page can suffice, for the sake of time lets just say that now transgression for transgression’s sake is one of my favorite aspects in art, hell, life in general.
Why not draw animals smoking weed and fucking in an abandoned apartment? Its fucking dope.
The film, well, Ralph Bakshi’s works in general also significantly influenced my artistic trajectory in many other ways, but I don’t doubt ill talk about that another time.
Alright let’s see, Matthew Gafford’s projects were also a big push of course, it made me realize that not all furry art has to be “owo core” sort to speak, you can do whatever.
Sherlock hound, like, fucking look at it.
But yea, nothing previously mentioned will ever compare to the biggest chess piece here, the one which repercussions forever changed my life by making me say afterwards
‘oh shit, this is becoming less incidental, im actually starting to look for furry art’.
It’s the echo project, of course.
Around the ends of 2022 I once found a video in my recommendations, the thumbnail depicting a bloody wolf dude looking devastated and a sweet three hour run time, it was Keith Ballard’s thesis on Adastra, not a spectacular youtuber by any means of the word but one who’s opinion I marginally respected thanks for his queer reading of Beastars.
So I said fuck it, I might as well play the game instead of spoiling it right here and now, it was summer after all.
Holy shit.
It became one of my favorite videogames in the span of a week, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, such a retarded premise, I entered that game expecting a stupid story with maybe some good moments here and there. What I wasn't expecting was ending up reading a sci fi political drama with touches of romance and theological horror, it’s sublime.
So much so that I had to tell my best friend about it, I still remember being so fucking embarrassed describing all this furry bara porn stew to another person. But I couldn’t help myself.
Later on that week he started playing it and also became a fan, overall a really fond memory.
The most important lesson that game left me as an artist is my relationship to porn in media.
I would have a really hard time taking nsfw stuff seriously, societal stigma showing it’s hand once again, but Adastra opened my eyes to how sex scenes can enrich a story, and be really really powerful if it’s made in service of the plot, and not vice versa.
And thanks to that revelation I’ve been able to enjoy a wider range of art that I don’t think I would have given the time of day before, so im forever indebted to that game.
To round it up, yes, all the aforementioned works did made me realize that I was interested in furry art specifically, but for the rest of 2023 I would never call myself a furry artist, and much less a furry in general.
This wasn’t because I didn’t want to be a part of the community, but that’s the key word. I wouldn’t call myself a furry because it made me feel like a phony; I didn’t interact with the community, hell, in Uruguay I wasn’t even sure there was one to speak of. Lastly (and more importantly) I didn’t even have a fursona.
So what exactly made me seek that community, that identity?
Its a really hard thing to answer, not because I don’t know how to do it, but because it’s because of a lot of factors relating to my personal life, so bear with me.
Im an art student from the faculty of fine arts in Uruguay, it’s a 6 year career and im only halfway through it. Thing is, I actually live in Maldonado, a department somewhat close to the capital where my university is, so im living alone in Montevideo at a cheap residency.
Living in the city is quite the isolating experience, I didn’t socialize a whole bunch my first year here, my second year I had to stay in my hometown because of logistics, but my third? I made sure it was different.
I started looking for artistic events, music jams, weird bars, getting to grindr, going to conventions, standard stuff. I never considered the posibility of finding furries in uruguay, but searching the web seemed like a good enough start.
I did find some traces, a youtube video here, an ancient facebook group there, but nothing truly centralized or alive for that matter, it was a downer, but expected, I do hate my country after all. My next possible step was finding furries in real life? Not likely, but keeping an ear to the ground couldn’t hurt.
Plus in a few days I was going to some free anime con next to the capital, who knows.
It was around that time that I started designing my fursona, took a while on deciding the species.
I still remember the day of the con so vividly, I came down in the wrong bus stop so I walked along the route, It was cloudy, was feeling kinda sick so I decided to buy some snack at a nearby gas station before entering the con proper. At that very gas station is where I meet my first furries in real life, they were buying snacks too, hilarious.
So yea, we hanged out a few hours, took some photos and added me to a telegram furry group (of course). There really was a furry community after all, the fuckers where hiding in telegram, my biggest blind spot haha.
Apparently there are around 150 Uruguayan furries, who could have thought...
This is the point where I’d say I was a furry proper, and with that affirmation came some frequent thoughts and topics to explore thanks to this new label on my identity.
As an artist, old and new horizons:
In short, being a furry artist has kinda made me not care about what people think of me?
It’s truly liberating, im not weary of touching difficult topics, or if people think im cringe or whatever, fuck em. Of course I don’t wanna pigeonhold myself into only making furry art, christ, but its a facet that has no doubt enriched my career so, so much in every other aspect. Giving me a newfound sense of pride in my work, hell, next year im considering selling art at conventions and indie fairs.
I also have the chance now of investigating the community’s history, and its super fascinating, shouts out to the Yerf, Fursuit and ConFurence archives.
This whole arc also made me create a furaffinity and bluesky account, and dog, I never realized how much I missed being able to consume art without it being fanart, or without being weary of ai bullshit thanks to the policies in those two sites. Gold star overall.
Avatars in the digital world, destroying your identity:
This is where it gets complicated, and I don’t know how well equipped I am to talk about it.
By far the most fascinating aspect of furries for me is the concept of the fursona, with regular artists you create art and that’s it, the relation between artist-art stays relatively unambiguous. Not so much for furries tho.
With the concept of a fursona in the mix the line between artist-art becomes significantly blurrier, yes, someone can definitely say the same with the concept of online avatars, and to that I respond with a definitive no.
You see, the melding between these two subjects becomes part of the furry’s identity at a much larger scale than just an online avatar, this is because of two factors: subcultural tradition and physical presence.
What do I mean by tradition in this setting, well, the furry community is a subculture with a set of codes and different ways of identity perception built in. When a fellow furry introduces themselves they usually mention their fursona and apply its description to their person. Its not much like showing the art you made but who you are as an individual.
The ‘what’s your fursona ’ topic is always fun to talk about but more importantly, in this context it’s expected.
The second factor being physical presence, this one’s easier to explain; fursuits and badges, of course. There’s a direct, physical connection being made between your fursona and your social presentation.
It gets especially fucky with suits, is that just you or is it just your fursona? This whole thing is a little silly, surely it’s both. But what if you take off the suit, did that character disappear or is it still there in people’s head? And more importantly, is it still in your perception of self?
This whole topic hit me hard one time when my best friend said that my fursona looked like me, how can such an abstract representation look like myself? But at the same time I get it too, I see drawings of my fursona and think ‘hey that’s me’… it’s crazy.
The importance of subculture:
I’ve been combing trough this last point a lot, more so as an artist than just a furry.
I suspect that the place where you (the reader) live is much different and or bigger that Uruguay so let me paint you a picture; it’s fuuuucking boring here, it has a population of like 3M and most of it is concentrated in the capital, and even the fucking capital doesn’t have too much to offer artistically. The less I say of other departments the better.
Most importantly, as a netizen from birth ill never connect with the demonstrations of culture around here, im completely alienated.
So, this situation really calls into attention how ungodly valuable the existence of subculture can be, like jesus, I met more people with similar interests in 2024 that I had probably my whole life.
It’s weird to find stuff like this in such a boring place man, it gives me hope.
Thatsallcya-
My relation to furry media:
I never paid much attention to furry shit in general most of my life, say I started really getting into art when I was about 16 and even then. Most times I encountered anything related I treated it with the same contempt I treat bronies or homestuck fans, a punching bag for the normies and a weird cousin you get to talk to in Christmas meetings as an artist.
Not to say I avoided furry media, especially as a kid, but things like crash bandicoot, spyro the dragon and the goofy movie don’t really count as such in my head, they where retroactively adopted by the community and not necessarily made by them. Plus when you’re young you don’t think about shit like that.
It wasn't till much later that I began to seek furry aspects in art thanks to some important works in addition to some philosophical issues.
When did it click, important works:
I find it hard to pin point what piece of art began this interest, I assume I was predisposed to it, as an edgy teenager that hated everyone his age, and felt cool when he could make them feel just as alienated as he felt towards them, a gay teenager in fact, important factor as well.
That same predisposition that led me to 70s exploitation films down the road is exactly what brought me to fall in love with *that* idiot, he who fought many a good man and laid many a good women, Fritz the cat, baby.
That 73’ film made a much, much larger impact to my life than what the scope of this page can suffice, for the sake of time lets just say that now transgression for transgression’s sake is one of my favorite aspects in art, hell, life in general.
Why not draw animals smoking weed and fucking in an abandoned apartment? Its fucking dope.
The film, well, Ralph Bakshi’s works in general also significantly influenced my artistic trajectory in many other ways, but I don’t doubt ill talk about that another time.
Alright let’s see, Matthew Gafford’s projects were also a big push of course, it made me realize that not all furry art has to be “owo core” sort to speak, you can do whatever.
Sherlock hound, like, fucking look at it.
But yea, nothing previously mentioned will ever compare to the biggest chess piece here, the one which repercussions forever changed my life by making me say afterwards
‘oh shit, this is becoming less incidental, im actually starting to look for furry art’.
It’s the echo project, of course.
Around the ends of 2022 I once found a video in my recommendations, the thumbnail depicting a bloody wolf dude looking devastated and a sweet three hour run time, it was Keith Ballard’s thesis on Adastra, not a spectacular youtuber by any means of the word but one who’s opinion I marginally respected thanks for his queer reading of Beastars.
So I said fuck it, I might as well play the game instead of spoiling it right here and now, it was summer after all.
Holy shit.
It became one of my favorite videogames in the span of a week, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, such a retarded premise, I entered that game expecting a stupid story with maybe some good moments here and there. What I wasn't expecting was ending up reading a sci fi political drama with touches of romance and theological horror, it’s sublime.
So much so that I had to tell my best friend about it, I still remember being so fucking embarrassed describing all this furry bara porn stew to another person. But I couldn’t help myself.
Later on that week he started playing it and also became a fan, overall a really fond memory.
The most important lesson that game left me as an artist is my relationship to porn in media.
I would have a really hard time taking nsfw stuff seriously, societal stigma showing it’s hand once again, but Adastra opened my eyes to how sex scenes can enrich a story, and be really really powerful if it’s made in service of the plot, and not vice versa.
And thanks to that revelation I’ve been able to enjoy a wider range of art that I don’t think I would have given the time of day before, so im forever indebted to that game.
To round it up, yes, all the aforementioned works did made me realize that I was interested in furry art specifically, but for the rest of 2023 I would never call myself a furry artist, and much less a furry in general.
This wasn’t because I didn’t want to be a part of the community, but that’s the key word. I wouldn’t call myself a furry because it made me feel like a phony; I didn’t interact with the community, hell, in Uruguay I wasn’t even sure there was one to speak of. Lastly (and more importantly) I didn’t even have a fursona.
So what exactly made me seek that community, that identity?
Its a really hard thing to answer, not because I don’t know how to do it, but because it’s because of a lot of factors relating to my personal life, so bear with me.
Im an art student from the faculty of fine arts in Uruguay, it’s a 6 year career and im only halfway through it. Thing is, I actually live in Maldonado, a department somewhat close to the capital where my university is, so im living alone in Montevideo at a cheap residency.
Living in the city is quite the isolating experience, I didn’t socialize a whole bunch my first year here, my second year I had to stay in my hometown because of logistics, but my third? I made sure it was different.
I started looking for artistic events, music jams, weird bars, getting to grindr, going to conventions, standard stuff. I never considered the posibility of finding furries in uruguay, but searching the web seemed like a good enough start.
I did find some traces, a youtube video here, an ancient facebook group there, but nothing truly centralized or alive for that matter, it was a downer, but expected, I do hate my country after all. My next possible step was finding furries in real life? Not likely, but keeping an ear to the ground couldn’t hurt.
Plus in a few days I was going to some free anime con next to the capital, who knows.
It was around that time that I started designing my fursona, took a while on deciding the species.
I still remember the day of the con so vividly, I came down in the wrong bus stop so I walked along the route, It was cloudy, was feeling kinda sick so I decided to buy some snack at a nearby gas station before entering the con proper. At that very gas station is where I meet my first furries in real life, they were buying snacks too, hilarious.
So yea, we hanged out a few hours, took some photos and added me to a telegram furry group (of course). There really was a furry community after all, the fuckers where hiding in telegram, my biggest blind spot haha.
Apparently there are around 150 Uruguayan furries, who could have thought...
This is the point where I’d say I was a furry proper, and with that affirmation came some frequent thoughts and topics to explore thanks to this new label on my identity.
As an artist, old and new horizons:
In short, being a furry artist has kinda made me not care about what people think of me?
It’s truly liberating, im not weary of touching difficult topics, or if people think im cringe or whatever, fuck em. Of course I don’t wanna pigeonhold myself into only making furry art, christ, but its a facet that has no doubt enriched my career so, so much in every other aspect. Giving me a newfound sense of pride in my work, hell, next year im considering selling art at conventions and indie fairs.
I also have the chance now of investigating the community’s history, and its super fascinating, shouts out to the Yerf, Fursuit and ConFurence archives.
This whole arc also made me create a furaffinity and bluesky account, and dog, I never realized how much I missed being able to consume art without it being fanart, or without being weary of ai bullshit thanks to the policies in those two sites. Gold star overall.
Avatars in the digital world, destroying your identity:
This is where it gets complicated, and I don’t know how well equipped I am to talk about it.
By far the most fascinating aspect of furries for me is the concept of the fursona, with regular artists you create art and that’s it, the relation between artist-art stays relatively unambiguous. Not so much for furries tho.
With the concept of a fursona in the mix the line between artist-art becomes significantly blurrier, yes, someone can definitely say the same with the concept of online avatars, and to that I respond with a definitive no.
You see, the melding between these two subjects becomes part of the furry’s identity at a much larger scale than just an online avatar, this is because of two factors: subcultural tradition and physical presence.
What do I mean by tradition in this setting, well, the furry community is a subculture with a set of codes and different ways of identity perception built in. When a fellow furry introduces themselves they usually mention their fursona and apply its description to their person. Its not much like showing the art you made but who you are as an individual.
The ‘what’s your fursona ’ topic is always fun to talk about but more importantly, in this context it’s expected.
The second factor being physical presence, this one’s easier to explain; fursuits and badges, of course. There’s a direct, physical connection being made between your fursona and your social presentation.
It gets especially fucky with suits, is that just you or is it just your fursona? This whole thing is a little silly, surely it’s both. But what if you take off the suit, did that character disappear or is it still there in people’s head? And more importantly, is it still in your perception of self?
This whole topic hit me hard one time when my best friend said that my fursona looked like me, how can such an abstract representation look like myself? But at the same time I get it too, I see drawings of my fursona and think ‘hey that’s me’… it’s crazy.
The importance of subculture:
I’ve been combing trough this last point a lot, more so as an artist than just a furry.
I suspect that the place where you (the reader) live is much different and or bigger that Uruguay so let me paint you a picture; it’s fuuuucking boring here, it has a population of like 3M and most of it is concentrated in the capital, and even the fucking capital doesn’t have too much to offer artistically. The less I say of other departments the better.
Most importantly, as a netizen from birth ill never connect with the demonstrations of culture around here, im completely alienated.
So, this situation really calls into attention how ungodly valuable the existence of subculture can be, like jesus, I met more people with similar interests in 2024 that I had probably my whole life.
It’s weird to find stuff like this in such a boring place man, it gives me hope.
Thatsallcya-