What Furry Means to Me
A personal story from Fire Fox, a.k.a.
Kevin C.
I was first introduced to furry in mid March of
2003 year by Taris
Flashpaw, a fur in Nova Scotia I met through LiveJournal. Through
him, I not only learned about it, but made contact with other furs, who
clued me in on even more. Many people I know had the luck of
learning from first hand personal contact. In the absence of
this, I took what Taris and others told me, asking questions and
gathering web resources to read up on it, and just used the information
at my hands to get an idea in my head of just what furry was to me and
to others.
As I read, more and more I kept thinking "That sounds very much like
me" when various definitions" of furry were concerned. While I
agree that no 2 furs out there will say the same thing when asked "So
just what IS furry?" I will say I found what suited me, what matched my
life and what I've been through up to this point, good and bad. I
have the thought in my head to explore the more spiritual side, but I'm
holding off till I am able to spend time (in person) around other furs
who already have, so that I might add whatever insights they may have
to my repertoire.
The culmination of all this, furry to me is an expression of my what I
want to be as a person, but don't always manage to be. I
represent myself as a fox because, IRL, I am a very shy
individual. I'm also not the most witty individual on the
planet, or the most conversationally adept. Suffice to say, I've
been getting better at changing those two things towards meeting new
people, and the welcoming aspect has helped a great deal.
To summarize: the fox, in the anthro. world (at least so far as I have
explored) is often portrayed by the classic phrase: "sly fox".
Full of confidence, with a razor-sharp wit, keen insight and insatiable
cunning. Specifically, qualities that I want to inflect into my
IRL personality more than I actually do. Yes, I realize some of
the qualities that could be attributed to the fox can be seen in a
negative connotation (i.e. the sneakiness)...but I prefer not to think
of them that way. I prefer to view them as extension of a the
less introverted personality that I wish to project IRL. Not
everyone who is sneaky is
sneaky for bad reasons, for example. They might just be a
practical joker. Not everyone who is crafty is crafty b/c they're
plotting evil things to do to people. It can be simply an
extension of their inventiveness for positive things.
As for the furry community, as amorphous a term as that is, they are
also a large part of the picture. Yes, there are aspects that
drive me nuts, but cliques will form in any fandom, it's just a fact of
life and the interaction between people. And, even with the
overwhelming evidence of this trend at Anthrocon, I need to remember,
it wasn't as negative an atmosphere as I first perceived it to be, it
was just in some cases, people didn't know me personally. I can
understand that, and respect that, I just didn't see it that way at
first. The fact that I've managed to make so many new friends and
NOT be viciously shut out by any of whatever cliques already exist out
there speaks to the warm, open, and welcoming spirit of the furry
fandom. Never before have I seen a group of people with the level
of friendship and universal bonding on a common interest than I have in
the furry fandom. Courtesy of Anthrocon, I'm getting even more
involved, and finding I've only hit the tip of the iceberg. There
is so much more out there to discover, and I plan to keep on exploring.
It's because of all this and other good things that have come out of
this, that I'm happy to tell people "Yes, I'm a fur" And that
isn't changing any time soon.
If you stumbled across
this page as a fellow furtopia user, and you'd like to get to know me a
little better, this is the best way:
Read my livejournal
Or send me an email.
:) Take care!