Opinion: Is the furry fandom especially creative or original?

Reaction - disagree.

Creativity and originality are incredibly elastic value judgements, up to the individual. I notice they aren't defined here to give context. I suspect trying to do that would be a fool's errand.

Furry is very close to pop culture and low art ("Lowbrow" defines itself as a genre too BTW.) I think originality isn't necessary for that to still count as creative personal expression. https://www.flayrah.com/5370/pseudo-furry-videos-raise-questions-about-pop-cultu...

"Commercial" is a very elastic term too. Just because furry subculture is making use of some tools like nonprofit incorporation or benefiting from outside marketing doesn't mean it's indie nature is fading. You can alternately look at dollars. (Anthrocon, the biggest group entity, has a tiny budget less than a few months revenue of a neighborhood gas station.) Or structure (FurAffinity may be owned but little on it is mandated by IMVU.) Plenty of indie endeavors stay creator owned while getting production or distribution from larger entities who don't mess with their internal operation.

Across the market of little fan run cottage industry, the levels of revenue are probably strongly close to personal income with very little control to mandate what others produce (in other words, very few leaders or employers and employed.) That's not commercial, that's grassroots creativity. Seeing marketers want a piece of that action (even just getting notice from the weird factor) isnt something to worry about. Its a super positive sign that things are growing the way fans want. And we can make them ask permission to get our cooperation.

You start out the creative/original section by saying being based on something else does not make something less creative/original, then you go on to say that, actually, sometimes it does make it less creative/original because of plot, but then go to say that using tropes doesn't make something not creative/original, and even then, you say, actually, nothing is original. So I'm having trouble trying to understand what you're even trying to say there.

Tsk, tsk, come on Crossaffliction. I had to go fix four html tags! Well, two were links so probably my fault. But the italics ones were you.

A thought-provoking piece, well said. I don't agree with your conclusions 100%, and still think the fandom as special, but we're not that special.

We tend to emphasize what makes the furry fandom stand out, when we think about it, or explain to others why we're a fan. The same happens, when journalists and media focused on the furry fandom; they try to find what is distinctive, thus interesting, about furries. So it's nice to take a step back and have a reminder, about what it has in common with other fandoms and interests, and how that fits across the whole of human activity.

I think it's indeed more correct to say we're _unusually_ creative, as a group. Certainly more so than most other identifiable social groupings such as, say, pensioners, divorcees or Wal-Mart shoppers. (For full disclosure, I belong to all three of these specified groups as well as the furry fandom.) Compared to other fan groups, not only is the difference less clear-cut but... How do you effectively and precisely measure something like creativity, anyway? What are the metrics? And, how are we going to conduct a formal, scientific study on the matter when we can't even define exactly what a fur is? So all we really have to go on are our own highly-subjective and unscientific personal impressions. Which, I freely admit, serve as my only basis for the unjustifiably authoritative-sounding statement below.

We furs are indeed an unusually creative group of individuals, easily ranking in the top two or three percent of identifiable human social groupings. We probably stand pretty high even among the especially-creative fandom-related groups. But are we _uniquely_ creative?

No.

I don't understand the article. Furry fandom is a niche thing, less than 0,01% of the population belong to it. And it's mostly an amateur passtime, most furries put little / no money into fandom-targeted products.

Also, it has a commercial side, but I don't see how that's related (or inversely related) to originality or creativity.

To keep it simple, the fandom members are creative / original because they do shit other people don't. They dress in animal costumes. They draw / keep trying to draw over the age of 16. And they write long-winded articles about furry-related stuff and put them up on websites. Most people who like videogames but not furry, in contrast, consume media, don't create it.

I would say in a sense yes, we are more creative than the average fandom. A large portion of the art, literature, etc coming out of the fandom is based on original ideas coming of fans heads. It's not based on an existing idea beyond the basic concept of anthropomorphism. We're are not taking somebody else's idea and running with it, we're creating our own characters, our own universes our own rules. What we do requires far more effort and dedication than the average fan who likes a TV show and decides to write some fanfiction. If I were to write an MLP fanfic, no matter how much I alter the world, no matter how many new characters I create, it's still My Little Pony, otherwise I wouldn't be writing it in the first place would I? Just like Sci-Fi, western or superhero movies, anthropomorphism is a genre and it has limitless possibilities for storytelling, but when you rely on anothers hard work, you are not being creative, you are being derivative. That's not a negative, that's just a fact, and there are plenty of examples of good derivative works.

So yes, furries are by definition, more creative.

There is a huge difference between fury and most other fandoms except Steampunk. This difference is 90%+ of the furry media, including fursonas and art, are original source created by a fans. Compare this to Bronies, Anime Doctor Who fans that are fans of a single original preexisting source, or derivative of the original source. Take Anime fandom for example. There is potential legal issue in Anime fandom because 99% of the media including art and cosplay are derivative work . I rarely see any original art or cosplay at an Anime con. The legal definition is “A derivative work is a new, original product that includes aspects of a preexisting, already copyrighted work.”
I can look at Anime, Brony and Furies as spectrum. One end you have Anime as 99% derivatives of a preexisting work . In the middle you have Brony fandom which contains derivatives and some original source in people who create their own ponies and cutie marks. At the other end is fury fandom the is approximately 90% is original source and the rest derivatives of a preexisting work.

I have tried to write this so many times, and for days, I cannot come up with a brief and concise way to express my point. Furries have suffered persecution. One tangible piece of evidence of this dates back to 1928 when John Galsworthy said in his forward to Bambi, “I do not, as a rule, like the method which places human words in the mouths of dumb creatures...” Even though it seemed alright for Disney to make talking animal cartoons for children, it was not generally accepted that adults or even children over a certain age were allowed to like them. Peer pressure, even within the family, silenced Furry fans. Even in the Sci-Fi conventions before we had our own cons, the people who expressed themselves as Furry were seen as frightfully bizarre because here is a group of fans of someone else's work, and there happens to be maybe one person who in some way expresses their appreciation or yearning for something that didn't even have a word to describe it at the time.

To fight to express one's self in the fullest without any group to latch onto, well, yes I consider that unique and original. When the first Furry convention came into existence there was still confusion as to what to call ourselves; the attendees relation to the con was described in paragraphs not single terms. I don't think anyone knew in expressible terms what it was they sought, but somewhere between that first con and the time I found the fandom, the term Furry Lifestyler came into existence, and that is what those trailblazers sought.

For all my life, without any guides or clues, I sought what I would discover is called Furry. When I walked through those doors and found that I was not alone in how I thought and what I wanted even though I had grown up isolated from any sense of a community, well... No, this story is not unique because so many others have experienced the exact same thing, but somehow this happened. Like soulmates who are drawn to one another, we are drawn to ideas, ideals, and a community that we created from nothing but a spark from within, and this happened despite great difficulty of people trying to force us to act otherwise.

I do not know how you define creative, but we created ourselves. I do not know how you define original and unique, to the outside world we may appear to have gone from oddity to hobby, but somehow we happened. Even if the rest of the world has forgotten, that to me, is a little more than unique; it is a miracle.

I can't help but see this as a fallacious question.

The problem lies within its constituent parts. There's no context for either 'creative' or 'original' provided in regards to how the author is using them. And why? It's almost impossible to actually provide that. The dictionary definition of 'creative' is a person with capacities for imagination and originality within artistic works.

Considering that, the extra inclusion of 'original' is somewhat redundant. We only need to really understand the parts of what it means to be creative. The concept of imagination is to be able to produce something sight unseen by its literary nature. Whether to one's taste or not, evidence of this talent being present is ubiquitous.

And originality, as a component of imagination? It's an expression of creation forged by a particular artist, of a like they hadn't consciously recognised as a copy. Now, playing the game of semantics, one could argue that nothing is original is everything is inspired by something else, whether conscious or not. If we did argue that, then it renders the word 'original' moot.

To wit, furries are both creative and original.

You have used various quantities to describe these factors. From reasonable descriptors like 'especially' to the hyperbole of 'unique.' One commentator used the quantifier of 'unusually,' with which I'm inclined to agree. The creativity of the furry fandom is unusual in both its niche nature and the content it produces. Whether that is 'especially' creative, or even 'special' is another matter entirely.

The problem is is that a lot of this is playing with words and subjectivity. It's an opinion that means nothing. As such, it's not so much an actual opinion founded in any sort of logic, but more a feeling. I can't help but psychoanalyse when I notice the recurring theme of having a potent dislike for anyone or anything that identifies itself as being special. That that's inherently offensive. And I think that's the truth behind the article, here.

This isn't about whether the furry fandom has capacities for creativity, nor is it about what quantities of it they have. I've explained my position on why I think this above. It's more an almost... I'd call it a political position based upon a feeling. And I know there are those who will regularly incorrectly attribute that as an opinion.

In closing. I think the article should have been titled as thus: Opinion Piece -- I Don't Think the Furry Fandom is Special and Neither Should You.

And that, in and of itself, is an entirely different topic to the one actually proposed.

A bit of thinking over this recently; I wonder if a better way to express furry's creativity/orginality obsession is more furries value creativity/originality, which is distinct from being creative/original. I think this is an important distinction; there's nothing wrong with valuing those traits. They're pretty good traits. But thinking furries have those traits automatically is problematic, because an individual furry is not asking his- or herself if what they are doing is actually creative/original if they already think they are.

And, also, yeah, furries sometimes are really uncreative/unoriginal, too.

Creativity/originality is all about context. In the context of the Disney animated "classics", The Lion King is ridiculously original, being the first "original-in-the-non-adapted" sense in the over fifty year history of the that series of movies. On the other hand, in the context of world storytelling, it's fairly by the numbers (and I'm not even talking about the stupid Kimba controversy). Likewise, a furry artist may not have based his/her character on a pre-existing show like some brony artist, but when compared to art within furry, well, it's just another vixen in a bikini (and the fifteenth with purple instead of orange fur in this e621 search page for the keyword "fox" alone). We have our own cliches; need I remind furry readers of the omni-present in furry stories "gay fox in high school" trope? Sure, your average "gay fox in high school" story may be a bit more creative/original than your average Lion King fan fic, but, you know, way to go for the low hanging fruit, there, guys.

I don't know, I never cared much about this dichotomy. There really is nothing original, everything is a copy or reimagining of something made earlier. "If you wish to make a pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." When you take part in a writing contest, the requirement "it must be an original text" doesn't mean you must invent a universe which results in your text being created. It means, it must have been done by you, not by someone else, and has to be distinct enough from other texts.

Is that original enough? Who cares? I don't. Maybe people who define furry fandom as a creative / original group should care? Uncle Kage is constantly describing furry fandom as a pool of creativity. I prefer to call it a pool of enthusiasm, thrill, passion. Is that less controversial? I don't care either way. My passion for furry trumps all your petty objections. You shall be squashed by a pile of fursuiters cuddling you all over.

Good point, on the one hand we see Zootopia fan art, maybe even a Zootopia related fursuit, along with many other tie ins to other commercial work and some of us say who cares if we violate someone's copyright. Then there are those whose whole view on the fandom is quite unique. Just watch any fursuit parade video, and tell me there isn't any one of a kind fursuits. That is impossible, like furry art and even furry comics. Most noteable Circles, which to me despite some of its critics is a fantastic piece of work. I am 100% sure if the furry element was removed it would be a published work by one of the major publishing houses and on the NYT Bestseller list.

The furry fandom is very unique, and I think a lot of furries saw that in Zootopia and why of of the reasons it was so successful. It is said some of the people behind the scenes in that film are in fact furries. I see more unique aspects of the fandom because of my interest in the fandom than most people. How many can actually say they go through roughly 1,000 videos a year. There are more one of a kind furry videos on Youtube and Dailymotion than most people even know about. The same with stories and art, I have really seen some amazing pieces, some are literally works of art. Then you have the webcomics, there are more than I could literally name. Most Notably "Housepets", and "Savestatecomics", both having very unique views, I highly recommend checking them out.

Oh sure we can say the fandom borrows from other media, that is true to some degree. But there is a greater portion in my opinion of very unique works.