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submitted by Krinkels
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Hello,

I've read a lot of your letters but haven't seen this one.

I need some advice from an older gay furry. I've met a guy (we are both furry and in our 20s) online and we have really hit it off and we are planning our first visit. He wants to be intimate when we meet and that's not a problem for me even though I don't have much experience. The problem is he doesn't want to use protection. He said he was tested a while ago and hasn't done anything risky since then. I've been tested a couple of times for medical things so I know I'm clean.

If anything happened I can hear people saying, "You had unprotected sex with somebody you just met, what did you expect?"

Does our online time count for building trust? Is it ever possible for two guys to have unprotected sex? I really like him and want to please him but all those horror stories I've heard keep playing in my head.

Thank you for taking my question, I don't know who to ask about this.

Nervous Raccoon

* * *

Dear Nervous,

An outstanding question; thank you for asking. It’s not only relevant to gay people, but also to heterosexuals because, of course, STDs are a concern to everyone because anyone can get one.

It is unfortunate we live in a world filled with nasty diseases that put a crimp in our longing to be freely intimate with another person. You are very wise to be extra cautious about having unprotected sex, even if it is someone you are really starting to care about.

So, is there a time when unprotected sex is fine? Yes, when both partners only have unprotected sex with each other. If either partner is having unsafe sex outside the relationship, then condoms are a must.

It is important to understand the technicalities of testing, especially when it comes to HIV. Infections from other diseases, such as syphilis, show up right away on a test, but HIV is very sneaky and nefarious. Did you know that you can be infected with HIV and be tested as negative for many months afterwards?  Some doctors even recommend you wait a year before being fully confident that you are negative.

Therefore, before you have sex with your new boyfriend, you need to have a sit-down with him. Ask to see his test results, and make sure he has had the full spectrum of tests, including syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes, and chlamydia. To be fair, you should do the same for yourself. Even if you are a virgin, the point of the test is to show him that you are willing to do the same thing that you are asking of him. So, apparently, you already had this done and can show him your results, so that’s good. Next, explain to him the nature of HIV and that you should each get a test every six months (from the date of your previous test) for one year. When all those are negative, then you have a clean bill of health.

I know this sounds like a pain in the ass, and it is, but if you wish to be 100% certain then that is the way to do it. The good news is that once you have shown each other you are completely healthy, the sex can be amazing because there is absolutely no nervousness, no voice in the back of your head wondering if your partner might be giving you a lethal disease.

In the meantime, sex can still be wonderful. Condoms have improved greatly over the years to the point that sensitivity is greatly enhanced. Also, there are many ways to explore each other’s bodies without penetration that can be very exciting and satisfying (too, as long as you do not have any open cuts or sores, oral sex is safe when it comes to HIV transmission, though not to some other diseases, like gonorrhea). Note, too, that if you indulge in any “fingering” that you should make certain your hands are free of cuts and scrapes (use latex gloves if you are uncertain). For further safety, you can also get vaccinated for some sexually transmittable diseases, including hepatitis.

The next big question is how will your partner respond to this information and your desire that you both have further testing to do before you have sex without condoms. He might drag out the line, “You don’t trust me” as a way to pressure you. If that is the case, you can reply, “It’s not that I don’t trust you, but it is possible that you have HIV and don’t know it, even though you were so great and had a test. I really appreciate that you got tested, but we need to be as careful as possible.” If he doesn’t respect your wishes and starts saying things like, “If you don’t trust me, then we should break up,” then that is emotional extortion in my book, and it tells you a lot about this guy and his motives.

If he’s a good guy, however, and genuinely loves you and wants to build a solid relationship, then he will respect your wishes and understand that a relationship is more than just about sex. You can continue by having protected sex for a time, or remain abstinent until all the tests are in and you can go hog wild on each other.

For your sake, I hope your partner is a good guy. Don’t give in to any pressure and you will be fine. Remember, your comfort in this relationship is just as important as his.

Let me know how it goes! Good luck!

Papabear

Author: Hi Papabear, I really love the column and it’s really awesome to see someone do so much good for the fandom, so a million hugs to you :3 My question is how to keep myself at a professional distance but still be me at the same time.  My issue is I’m starting to take […]

Author: Patch Packrat Corron, Patch, Harley, Fry, and Gravy take a furry message to the street Acceptance between cultures makes them thrive. At the GaymerX convention on August 3-4, acceptance was a basic idea for a popular panel- “Natural Allies: Gaymers and Furries”. GaymerX, the first gaming convention focused on LGBT themes, won media buzz and […]

http://31.media.tumblr.com/f5cba95ac4421bab1e5142e272ce170b/tumblr_mrfzwhcByj1soxd48o1_1280.jpg

Her character is cute (like her) and it was fun working with bright, cheery colors ^ I wish I could make more things like this.

[edit: I really shouldn't post here late at night. Especially with me not knowing the formatting stuff AND clicking the wrong submission post DURF.]

submitted by Mardi_Grawl
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submitted by howelllawson
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Whats the average age of people browsing this sub? I'm no good with this stuff but if someone could set up like a pole or something for us to see that would be real cool. Or just post your age in comments, I'm really just asking this out of curiosity.

submitted by R3ddFox
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Steam ID: derpittyderp112

We can play games like Garry's Mod, CS:S, L4D2, or TF2. (thats all I have installed right now) Comment or PM if you want to play some games with a fellow fur!

submitted by herpittyderpitty
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This week on Knotcast, the terrible trio is joined by Avery and Kyo. We talk fuzzy books, get more tumblr asks, get an audio con report, and answer some emails. Things to note this week Zootopia concept art: http://www.slashfilm.com/walt-disney-animation-announces-zootopia-for-2016/zootopia-working-title/ Use our coupon code knot at AdamEve.com for a great deal~ Music: http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01588/ Episode 229 - Fuzzy Books

I don't know if you guys like or care for the site e621.net or if this is the right place to post this but...

I've created a executable jar file that I can customize for use on your computer. It's written in Java and implements the Jsoup Html parser. It's sort of like a bot or web-crawler (I guess?).

It can download all images associated with a tag, So artist, character, or something else, and a single image (if needed). However It is not perfect, so I wouldn't try to download a tag with 1000 pages associated with it.It can download, with fast enough internet speed, ~200 images associated with a tag in 3-4 minutes.

It has the ability to back-list tags, so you don't have to have save unwanted images to your computer. It also will write the image name, artist of image, and character tags to a txt file, for all images saved to your drive, that can be converted to a CSV file that you can store in a database or even run in Excel/libre. It won't (can't or I don't know how) download flash games/movies. It works fine with Windows and if needed I can get it to work with Ubuntu.

I have downloaded all of the files that I want right now and will spend most of my time sifting through Images I want and don't want. So I am willing to share my tool so you too can download images more quickly off of e621.

Send me a message if youre interested so I can hard code some stuff (for your convenience) into the program and send it to you.

Edit: I'm going to sleep, I'll get back to all of you tomorrow. Feel free to message me still if you are intrested. The more the merrier.

Update: I've got to make some changes to my scripts so It doesn't bog down e621 and the admin can stop requests if something catastrophic happens. So You can still request one but It will take a bit for me to change my script. Sorry for dashing any hopes if any.

submitted by crimsonlancer
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submitted by mayupvoterandomly
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submitted by EvilFluffball
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I have had the idea floating around of a bird/wolf hybrid character, this bird has shiny feathers with shades of blue. Would this be considered a sparkle dog? I know there is a lot of hate of sparkle dog/wolf/fox chars, and I'm not generally a fan myself of that style. It is only going to be about two maybe three colors and they will both be within the blue spectrum and fade into the next color.

submitted by Terrowin
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submitted by mayupvoterandomly
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This is just a quick follow-up with some further information about the Species Selection and Character Creation article posted last week.  I normally post on Wednesdays and I had an article that could have been scheduled today, but with that article likely needing more space than this one and the desire not to distract from it with a simple addendum, I figured I’d swap the two days around and give tomorrow’s real article its time as the featured post!

Last Wednesday, even as the article was going live, I was packing up my laptop for an afternoon at a coffee shop (The Alley Cat, where the phone is always answered with a personable “meow!“) where I would spend a few hours talking with the inimitable Klisoura about furries and data.  Among other topics (some of which will show up here on [a][s] quite soon), we poked around some of the species data a little further, and found some more interesting facts.  That, combined with some input from others both on Twitter and FurAffinity, and some volunteers in private communication, got me thinking that more information is always better than less, and so here we go!

Common Terms

Over the process of exploring the data with Klisoura, we removed several common words such as the name of the species, articles such as ‘a’ or ‘an’, and so on.  However, we left in many additional terms that showed variation between species as they do help show the differences in the ways in which people thought of their characters.  A few of these words, such as ‘love’/'loved’ or ‘personality’ show up on every chart, of course, but at different rates, showing a stronger sense of, say, personality alignment with one species, but with a greater sense of, say, loving with another species.

However, this tends to hide some of the differences in responses that show species perception rather than character perception due to their relative prevalence.  By removing these common words as well, we find that the words associated with the stereotypes or perception of a particular species are emphasized even further, and those differences made plain.  Check it out below!

Additional Surveys, Visualization, and Exploration

The amount of data amassed is quite large.  Current data sets include the Furry Survey from 2009 until present (though we will not be providing information from current data until the 2013 survey itself is finished), the 2012 [adjective][species] Census and Survey, and all of the [a][s] small polls and surveys, not to mention aggregated data from other sources such as the IARP and other surveys, and scrape-able data-sources which we have used in the past.

As I am fond of saying in the Exploring the Fandom Through Data panel*, exploration is a cycle of sorts: from collection of data through understanding, giving back, dialog, and back to data collection.  This is a big portion of that cycle.  When we pull together data from the various sources, that’s a big part of the understanding stop of that cycle, just as presenting visualizations such as the word-clouds is a big part of the giving back portion.  By presenting this data in a form that shows some of the story behind it, we can start a dialog between those who produce the results and those who consume them, which leads right back to the beginning: collection.  This, of course, is a fancy way of saying, we invite comments and questions by posting these results freely.  More than that, we love the feedback, because that’s what helps drive us to ask new questions, explore new topics, and try to understand more of our subculture.

We got several responses to the last post, and I think it would be good to expose some of this process to all so that we can see what goes on in this whole cycle.

• I’d like to see X species/Why didn’t you do X? – We have data for several species, plus several write-in answers for additional species that were not available through the check-boxes.  However, as the number of respondents nears one for each given species, two things can happen to the data: it can either get skewed wildly in inappropriate directions, or it can near the normal distribution of words within any given text.  For example, if we were to take this here paragraph, we’d see a fairly normal distribution of words, with a slightly higher weight on ‘species’, but nothing out of the norm.  However, if you were to respond to your choice of species of “fox” with “fox fox fox fOX FOX FOX OH MAN I LOVE FOXES”, then, as you can see, the distribution is wildly skewed toward ‘fox’.  This was the reason for us restricting data to the more popular species responses out there: we are more likely to see trends that might, in some way, represent those who respond with a given answer.
• This totally jives with why I chose X/I can’t understand why people would answer in such a way! – First of all, these are only general trends that express the reasons for choosing a species to represent oneself.  The are hardly guides, and they often fall along social perceptions of the species in wider culture, outside of furry (thinking of wolves in a pack, speedy cheetahs, or cunning foxes is hardly out of the norm for western society).  Secondly, did you take the Furry Survey? If something seems missing, it could be your response!
• What about fandom perceptions that make species more appealing? - I mentioned in last week’s article that there were what I termed “self-reinforcing stereotypes” associated with many species.  For instance, Altivo mentions those who would choose fox, husky, or horse due solely for their perceived sexual role within the fandom.  This is most assuredly worth an article of its own, but in brief, that is a difficult thing to measure both in the data as explored and also in the responses to the questions asked at the Species Selection and Character Creation panel.  Needless to say, we haven’t forgotten about fandom-specific stereotypes as a factor in selection, simply that the point of the article was to explore selection as a more general topic.
• Have you tried correlating against X?/What further things can be done with the data? – This sentiment is perhaps best expressed by FA user NEXRAD in their comments on the Jackals/Coyotes post on FA.  There is a lot - a lot – of data in all of the responses to the Furry Survey.  In fact there are a stupefying number of data points in any one year of the survey!  We can look for trends, such as we have done with the species, or model relationships based on correlations or clustering as was suggested.  All of these are possible, but they take time and we are, for the most part, lay-critters doing the best we can outside our day jobs, and checking our work before sending it out into the world.  (Additionally, [a][s] has some restrictions that prevented the topic from being explored further in last week’s article: we try to keep our articles at about 2,000 words or under to help with readability and comprehension, and so the best place for such work is in future articles, posts, and visualizations!)

Finally, we’d like to reiterate the sentiment that has been in place with the Furry Survey for several years now.  We do our best to present a fairly solid breakdown of the information provided in the surveys, but we welcome requests for larger data sets from other researchers in the future.  These aren’t available for direct download currently, and will take some time to anonymize and prepare, but they do exist, and the same holds true as with “more information”: more eyes on that information is always better!

* Which, if everything works out okay, I should be able to provide as an updated recording soon.  We have video and audio recordings from RMFC this year, and if their quality is good enough, we’ll pull them together and put them up on Vimeo as we did last year.

submitted by tigerpillow
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