TIL what a furry is

I always assumed this was some cosplay of some show or whatever but I didn't realize it was a whole group of people.

Whats the background on these people? Is this a sexual thing? What makes people become one...

It has a long history predating the internet, but it basically is defined as a fascination with anthropomorphized animals. People with a shared interest gravitated together. There are lots of stories featuring anthropomorphized animals, created by non furries and furries alike.

So the main way of engaging with furry characters and the furry community was through artwork and storytelling. It became more and more common for individuals to craft their own unique furry characters, and create art work and stories about them. The experience became collaborative. People started to meet up and have conventions where they would share and sell their work. And of course the biggest furries started to create costumes of their characters. And then the raw dogging starts.

It has a big crossover with other subcultures like homosexuals, writers, artists, cosplayers and fans of animation. So that all gets jumbled together as well. It's not exclusively sexual but that's become a big part of it.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/8/834dfdee.jpg

I am.. more of a scalie.. or if you count a canine like dragon a furry or scalie is up to you. In media, such as children's media, animal characters are easier to relate to than human characters. This can go with Objects (Toy Story, Brave Little Toaster). Secret of Nihm being a well made film and stuff like cartoons from other countries that stared animal characters is what made me draw them. Humans are kinda hard to draw.

We don't claim the ew ew people.

OneEyedShinobi posted...

In media, such as children's media, animal characters are easier to relate to than human characters

Nah that's a you problem.

shadowsword87 posted...

Nah that's a you problem.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/3/3e04abae.jpg

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/5/5d353ab1.jpg

One of these is more obviously relatable than the other.

shadowsword87 posted...

Nah that's a you problem.

Better than human characters

Blightzkrieg posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/3/3e04abae.jpg

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/5/5d353ab1.jpg

One of these is more obviously relatable than the other.

It's obvious it's Billy from Billy and Mandy.

I prefer Robots, but that is Transformers biasim for me.

Blightzkrieg posted...

It has a long history predating the internet, but it basically is defined as a fascination with anthropomorphized animals. People with a shared interest gravitated together. There are lots of stories featuring anthropomorphized animals, created by non furries and furries alike.

So the main way of engaging with furry characters and the furry community was through artwork and storytelling. It became more and more common for individuals to craft their own unique furry characters, and create art work and stories about them. The experience became collaborative. People started to meet up and have conventions where they would share and sell their work. And of course the biggest furries started to create costumes of their characters. And then the raw dogging starts.

It has a big crossover with other subcultures like homosexuals, writers, artists, cosplayers and fans of animation. So that all gets jumbled together as well. It's not exclusively sexual but that's become a big part of it.

This is a rather solid quick summary, as a furry myself.

Also TC are you new to the internet or something? It's kind of hard to believe someone who posts on a dying internet forum isn't aware of perhaps the most infamous internet subculture, even my boomer bosses at my old job somehow knew what we were. Not trying to lambast you about it though an i apologize if I offend, just surprising with how much the fandom has exploded in the last half decade.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/7/7a4b9515.jpg

Cruddy_horse posted...

This is a rather solid quick summary, as a furry myself.

Also TC are you new to the internet or something? It's kind of hard to believe someone who posts on a dying internet forum isn't aware of perhaps the most infamous internet subculture, even my boomer bosses at my old job somehow knew what we were. Not trying to lambast you about it though an i apologize if I offend, just surprising with how much the fandom has exploded in the last half decade.

I honestly had no idea. My coworkers were talking about it, my older coworkers know what it is because their middle-school and early-HS kids have mentioned it to them. I've heard the word alot but I dont really care for cosplay, anime, comics, cartoons, etc so I just don't even bother clicking or reading about it. I just assumed it fell into come cosplay category of some TV show like MLP or something like that.

Man, this topic is making me feel old.

I used to have a group of friends who were furries. This was probably around 2009-2010, when I was in college. I did not know what a furry was at the time, and was probably at roughly a similar level of ignorance as the TC.

Anyway, my recollection of this group of furries, in particular, is that they were basically just like cosplayers, only for some reason they gravitated heavily towards anthropomorphic animal type characters. They would all go to anime / comic conventions and cosplay, though they wouldn't exclusively cosplay furry characters.

Most of them owned at least one expensive custom fursuit that they paid a lot of money to have custom made for them. Those that didn't have one, either had just a head and paws, or were saving up in order to pay a fursuit creator to build them one.

I was into cosplay at the time, but I remember thinking that the dumbest part of the whole thing was paying so much money for a custom fursuit. Why would you drop over $1,000 to have a suit made of some random character that you just made up? Again, we were in college, and this was like 15 years ago. $1,000 was a shit ton of money to me at the time.

Only 1-2 of them were into the sexual side of the of the fandom. Interestingly enough, all of the other furries in the group thought that those people were very weird for treating fursuiting as a sexual endeavor. To them, I guess it really was just self expression / art.

I actually went out fursuiting with them a couple of times. I obviously didn't own my own fursuit, but we found an old gorilla costume in someone's attic that I guess was someone's dad's Halloween costume years earlier, so I wore that.

From what I remember, fursuiting basically consisted of the following:
- Going outside and walking around.
- High fiving children.
- Taking pictures with random people who were curious as to why there's a bunch of people dressed as animals in the park.
- Going into random businesses just to see people's reactions.
- Going bowling or mini golfing.
- Acting "in character" just to see people's reactions.
- Trying to see who could come up with the funniest sounding coded furry language and then chuckling about it (paw-lease = please, furr-iend = friend, purrfect = perfect, etc).
- Going over to someone's place afterwards to drink beer and playing board games.

Anyway, that's and just my experience with the fandom. I think I have an overall neutral, maybe slightly positive opinion of the fandom as a whole.

It's just people doing something that they find enjoyable / have an affinity for. It just so happens that this thing is something that most external observers find to be weird.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2768430/ATLYSS/

Lokarin posted...

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2768430/ATLYSS/

I just found out about that game yesterday, it's awesome! there's a demo version on itch.io

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3120020/Kings_of_Hell/

This is my current obsession, it's a pretty cool beat em up with some risque characters, nothing super explicit.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2154650/Pawperty_Damage/

MaddenDude_ posted...

Whats the background on these people? Is this a sexual thing? What makes people become one...

You said you learned what it was, but then ask questions like you don't know what it is.

And I'm pretty sure people become a furry after being bitten by one. Or by having unprotected sex with one.

Blightzkrieg posted...

It has a long history predating the internet, but it basically is defined as a fascination with anthropomorphized animals. People with a shared interest gravitated together. There are lots of stories featuring anthropomorphized animals, created by non furries and furries alike.

So the main way of engaging with furry characters and the furry community was through artwork and storytelling. It became more and more common for individuals to craft their own unique furry characters, and create art work and stories about them. The experience became collaborative. People started to meet up and have conventions where they would share and sell their work. And of course the biggest furries started to create costumes of their characters. And then the raw dogging starts.

It has a big crossover with other subcultures like homosexuals, writers, artists, cosplayers and fans of animation. So that all gets jumbled together as well. It's not exclusively sexual but that's become a big part of it.

Not all furries have costume sex, but I feel like most probably do. But yeah, TECHNICALLY you have furry fans who don't go for the costume stuff at all (or the plushie fetish stuff).

Count_Drachma posted...

Not all furries have costume sex, but I feel like most probably do.

If you spent $5000-20,000 on a costume, are you going to cut a hole in it and get it all sticky?
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/c/c8727880.jpg
(This fursuit cost almost $16,000)

But yeah, TECHNICALLY you have furry fans who don't go for the costume stuff at all

Probably more that don't than do.

There does seem to be more of the "you HAVE to get a costume!" from the younger furries now than in the past. Of course, when I was a young furling, you only had one choice if you wanted a fursuit and that was to make your own. You couldn't buy them. Which is why some of the old fursuits look kinda amateurish compared to modern ones, because they were.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/aa46f5f0.jpg

Count_Drachma posted...

Not all furries have costume sex, but I feel like most probably do. But yeah, TECHNICALLY you have furry fans who don't go for the costume stuff at all (or the plushie fetish stuff).

It's wild that instead of asking people here that are part of the community you jump to conclusions or spout misinformation. Very, VERY few people of the fandom at large get into fursuiting to have sex in them to the point where most of those people know each other, like Captpackrat said the fullsuits are thousands of dollars, not something people are keen on getting dirty with body fluids. Obviously It exists though, you can easily find it in action on any adult website an most of it is still just them wearing individual parts not fullsuits. There ARE alot of "gooners" online who enjoy the adult art, that cannot be denied.

And there's plenty of furs that dont have any kind of fursuit and they are no less valid than one with a fursuit, again, a good quality one is thousands of dollars, not something everyone can drop on a silly costume mostly reserved for special events.

Just wait till you learn what mcfurry is

please don't be spreading misinformation about how most furries engage in explicit activity with each other while in costume. thank you.

I don't mind furries.. not that different from cosplay.

Therians though.. I mean come on. Not all of you can be cool animals. You'd think rationally there would be tons of cockroaches and worms.

WettyBhite posted...

Not all of you can be cool animals.

99% of furries are either canine or feline. They lack imagination. Where are the armadillo, bat, or elephant furries?

My favourite are the furries who look exactly like a dog but they're backstory is like "I am 40% dog, 30% gopher, 15% elk and 15% dragon".

But anyway weirder furry variations do exist but I haven't ever seen costumes for them, only in art.

Zareth posted...

99% of furries are either canine or feline. They lack imagination. Where are the armadillo, bat, or elephant furries?

Reptiles please.

Need more leezards.

Pony furries were really big for a hot second

Remember when Trigger Happy TV used to stage fake fights between groups of furries and record people's reactions?

Yes, I do know
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2154650/Pawperty_Damage/

Blightzkrieg posted...

My favourite are the furries who look exactly like a dog but they're backstory is like "I am 40% dog, 30% gopher, 15% elk and 15% dragon".

But anyway weirder furry variations do exist but I haven't ever seen costumes for them, only in art.

I have noticed Hybrids are decidedly less common now, whereas I remember every odd furry having a Folf(Fox/Wolf) atleast. Seems like Protogens are part of the "furry starter kit" now.

Zareth posted...

99% of furries are either canine or feline. They lack imagination. Where are the armadillo, bat, or elephant furries?

"Ah yes, the blue dog furry, the most common of it's species"

Blightzkrieg posted...

Pony furries were really big for a hot second

I'm surprised it took you this long to bring up ponies Bligh.

Zareth posted...

Remember when Trigger Happy TV used to stage fake fights between groups of furries and record people's reactions?

What? Never heard of this.

Cruddy_horse posted...

I'm surprised it took you this long to bring up ponies Bligh

There's like an 8 year period of my life that's a total fucking blur

Here in, Duckburg

Some furries enjoy singing furry songs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv6nCnz-MIk&list=OLAK5uy_mtKqKLbCWRjd4WprcdCIu0uNNrz8owHIQ