Video: Furries – an inside look

Videographer Curt Pehrson gives an overview of the fandom with help from niteskunk, based largely on interviews from seven furs at Midwest FurFest 2010. [poizencat/fursuitlounge]

Read on for some highlighted quotes.

LeoAngelo notes the appealing nature of a fandom where you have the freedom to be yourself:

Most furries that you'll meet will probably be the nicest people that you will ever meet anywhere. [...] It's very supportive and I've never really experienced that kind of thing anywhere else other than here. [...] It's a really good place to be yourself, whatever that might be.

Kage describes the origin of his character:

I bought 'Peterson's Field Guide to North American Wildlife' and I'm leafing through it, trying to get inspiration. [...] I noticed out of the corner of my eye a shadow, and this enormous, monstrous, greasy, black Asian cockroach came scuttling up the side of my computer monitor. [...] this thing just turned and reared up at me, and my fear gave way to some strange admiration - 'That is some ballsy little roach!'

Smash talks about the depth of integration between furry fandom and your life:

It kinda became family – because wherever I went, there they were. [...] I live with furries, I'm around them all the time, I work with furries, the company I work for hosts furry websites – it's the whole life, it's not something I could just separate anymore. [...] I feel a lot more connected with my furry family than I do with my biological family, because I'm around the furries a lot more.

2 defines the difference between himself and his stage persona:

I use a tiny wedge of my personality, and 2 is kinda trapped in that little wedge – a very unreasonable, extremely loud and usually irate part of me [...] I leave better judgment out of 2's range of personality, so he winds up saying a lot of things that a lot of people wish they could say.

Daisuke gives wise words on how to deal with jerks:

People are nice, they actually understand, they're actually open-minded – you get the occasional asshole, but it happens. You just gotta learn to ignore them, and move on.

Giza highlights a flaw in the media fascination with sex and furry fandom:

Human beings have sex – I don't know understand why the media is particularly interested in that aspect of furry, because we're just a slice of humanity as a whole. If they're going to be asking questions, they should really be asking "why are human beings having sex?" – but that probably isn't going to sell as many issues.

Thibby reflects on how the mistakes of the past can become part of your character:

Whats funny though is the way I designed him was a mistake – back then I had a really old computer with a really old screen, and he started out as a sprite [...] so I took a Tails sprite, cut the tails off, re-colored him blue, made him look like a cat. The problem is, the screen looked like he was blue, but when I got my new computer I found I had been making him lavender, or periwinkle as a lot of people have been calling him, the whole time. And I didn't want to change that, I didn't want to change my image [...] so he's been kind of purplish the whole time.