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How would I explain furries to my parents?
Hey there /r/furry, I've been subbed for a while, and my parents just caught on. They took my computer and looked through the history, and are seemingly disgusted at what I look at on a daily basis. Porn or not, they don't like it, and haven't talked to me all day. What can i do to mediate the situation?
submitted by killamix1[link] [3 comments]
Doing 3 free sketch portraits to the first 3 to leave a reference sheet or a picture of their sona.
Bored as hell so why not? A couple examples: 1 and 2
submitted by HarmonyHeartstrings[link] [5 comments]
My Little MLP Adventure: Verdict
I don’t normally watch children’s cartoons.
Yet I sat down and watched several hours of My Little Pony, in an attempt to understand why it has become so visible within the furry community. Here is what I discovered.
(This article follows on from last week – My Little MLP Adventure: Prologue.)
I learned that My Little Pony is a cartoon aimed at an audience of young girls. It’s very well made: high production values, good animation, talented voice acting, robust and logical stories. That’s basically all it is.
Except that it has gained a huge adult following, including a high proportion of furries. The adult fans are largely male, young, and geeky; a demographic that not coincidentally describes a big swathe of the furry population.
I asked a few pony lovers why MLP is so popular. I received responses like ‘the brony community is great‘; or, ‘because MLP has critical mass online, so you can’t avoid it‘; or, ‘because it’s so childish that people like to make fun of it‘. All of these arguments may be true but they require there to be a large pre-existing MLP audience: none of them explain why so many people started—and kept—watching and caring in the first place.
The appeal of MLP can be inferred by looking at its audience: girls, and young geeky men (with some exceptions). MLP is a big deal because its art style and subject matter make it easy for people to identify with the characters. MLP appeals to people who are developing empathy.
Allow me to explain.
1. They Have Big Eyes
The ponies have big eyes: big, big eyes. Their heads are the size of their bodies; their eyes take up half their heads.
We humans are social beings. Most of our communication takes place through body language, especially facial expressions. We see faces in inanimate objects all the time: in sand dunes on Mars, or a slice of toast.
Faces in inanimate objects: sand dunes on mars; the Virgin Mary on toast; a building.
The ability to infer human faces from little visual information is an evolved human trait, akin to the way zebras identify close family members by stripe patterns.
Eyes are especially important. For example, disembodied pictures of eyes, presented with no context, have been shown to have significant effects on behaviour. One study showed that pictures of eyes caused people to triple their voluntary donation for a cup of coffee, compared with pictures of flowers (ref); another found that posters of eyes in a cafeteria halved littering incidents, compared with pictures of flowers (ref).
Service industry workers relying on tips would be well advised to sketch a smiley face on each customer’s bill.
The ponies have huge eyes, and these eyes make it clear what they are thinking. This is narratively elegant—we don’t need everything spelt out—and it makes us feel like we understand the pony. This is empathy, and it’s why MLP is so engaging. Cartoons in general provoke a similar feeling, but MLP is more effective due to the huge, expressive, well animated, and well directed eyes.
It helps that the characters are female too, because…
2. The Idea of ‘Masculinity’ is Kinda Dumb
The gender of the ponies is relevant, especially for the original target audience. Girls watching MLP can identify with the characters, and engage in play as an imaginary participant in the pony universe.
It’s also relevant for the unintended audience—the young men—because of the state of masculinity in the 21st century. To be masculine, traditionally, was to be a force of change of the world, to be a creator. This has changed, and being masculine is now about being a detached observer of society, a trait that correlates with cynicism, sarcasm, and snarkiness. This can be (and often is) intelligent and worthwhile, but it’s not healthy. It creates a world where men are driven away from participation, because participation can lead to failure, and failure breaks the detached observer facade. (The only other option is to be a flawless hero, fine for cartoons.)
The female characters of MLP can explore friendship and creation without a requirement to be heroic or detached: they can ‘have adventures’ and succeed or fail on their own terms. A male version of MLP couldn’t do that, and still ring true.
As an aside, it’s nice to see that the gender of the characters isn’t relevant to the male viewership. Women are simply portrayed as the norm in the context of the pony universe, and that’s okay.
So beyond its core audience, MLP attracts…
3. Geeks with High IQs
People with maturing social skills may find empathetic experiences to be rare. This is common among intelligent male geeks because:
- Men tend to mature socially more slowly than women.
- Geeks may use their intelligence as a crutch to manage social situations, relying on their analytical skills rather than their developing emotional skills.
Such geeks may prefer to socialize where interpretation of subtle body language is less important: perhaps online, or otherwise where behaviour is constrained by rules (stereotypically over a game of Dungeons & Dragons or Magic: The Gathering).
People with limited empathic skills will often find social situations to be stressful and exhausting. If you are relying on an analytical brain in a social situation (rather than an empathic brain), it requires a lot of concentration, especially if there are more than a few people present. Geeks often find socializing stressful, and will sometimes incorrectly misdiagnose themselves as being introverted, or having mild autism. They’re not: they are just lower in empathy than most people, something that will grow given time.
***
My Little Pony, then, is going to meet an unconscious emotional need for many young men: the need for empathy. Young and geeky men will tend to find MLP very engaging, as they will be able to easily understand and empathize with the characters.
And if some of the fans are geeky, a subset of them are going to hyperfocus on the show, like Trekkies or any other geeky fandom. These hyperfocussed geeks make up MLP’s committed and intense following of bronies.
For the rest for us, MLP is engaging and easy to follow. We can ‘see’ what is going on inside the heads of the main characters—eyes being the windows of the soul—so the show is pleasing and familiar. It’s a relaxing viewing experience, almost hypnotic. As an experiment, my fellow viewers and I watched for a while with no sound, and we were able to follow the story with no apparent loss of fidelity.
For all its value, MLP is not high art. The humour is childish slapstick, a pre-teen version of Ow My Balls. The characters are simply drawn and simply motivated. The morals of the show are relentlessly, mind-numbingly positive. As an adjunct to our no-sound experiment, we also tried looking away so we were only exposed to the soundtrack: the script, the songs, and the foley artistry are nauseating, pandering, moronic. Like America’s Funniest Home Videos without the videos, but less fun.
Even with its limitations, the resonance of MLP with many members of the furry community is genuine and valuable. I suspect that its influence on furry culture will grow: like The Lion King or Robin Hood, MLP will be a gateway to furry for many people. The MLP fandom is innately limited by its subject, and many pony-fans will find the furry community to be an environment that allows them to grow beyond the constraints of the MLP universe. Pony lovers will easily fit into the furry world, a world which allows them to explore their connection with anthropomorphic animals on their own terms. As I’ve written in previous articles for [adjective][species], furry is a community that can help personal growth and maturation.
Such opportunities for personal growth will be greatest for younger MLP fans. Typically, people reach emotional maturity at about age 30, although this isn’t a hard limit.
I would argue that older fandom geeks, and they exist in any fandom, are limited people. They have failed to develop broader emotional skills that would allow them to look outside of their own interests and into the wider world. Such people limit their intake of culture to a small number of simple artefacts (MLP, Star Trek, whathaveyou) and are prone to hyperfocus on the minutiae of that culture. This doesn’t make them bad—such people are often great servants to their fandom—but they tend not to be well-rounded people.
There are broader horizons out there. Most geeky young men will fit the stereotype of the high school nerd who turns out to be the hunk at the 15-year reunion. Geeky young men remain intelligent and capable human beings, gaining empathetic skills later in life. They grow and shed their social awkwardness, learning to fit in without compromising their identity. The ‘sexy geek’ is a well known phenomenon, to the point that fashion houses try to package and sell the ‘geek chic’ formula. More simply, furries can take a look around and observe that the older members of the group are often confident, happy, and sexy.
Furry provides an environment for such growth. We’re diverse. We can engage with cultures like MLP without being defined by them. We can equally decide that MLP isn’t relevant to our personal interests and look elsewhere. This is what’s great about our community: we create our own culture. Many MLP fans will discover furry over the coming years, and learn such joys.
FBA accepting character submissions for 2013 Draft
Free pencil sketch of your fursona. Give me something fun to draw.
Hey, I'm fairly new to being a furry, but I've been drawing cartoons for a long time. It just ...took awhile for me to realize exactly how much I liked furry art. Here's a sample from my sketchbook, and a digital painting just for reference. I haven't drawn much full anthro art, but that should change after a few requests.
If you want a sketch, you'll need to give me a few things:
Description or reference art of your 'sona.
Scale of how much realism you want in it- [Pure Cartoon] 1 ... 10 [Realistic Anthro]
An action or expression. Nothing too complicated though, please.
If you want color in your finished sketch, that'll take longer and so I can't do it for free. PM me in that case or go to my very much inactive FA account, and we can work something out.
For the rest, I'll be here all day with nothing better to do.
EDIT: It is 7:22 Eastern Standard time, and I need to head out for awhile. I don't intend to leave any commenter without a drawing though, so I'll get around to the rest when I come back and when I have time tomorrow. Thanks for the feedback too! I'm glad you like my drawings.
EDIT 2: Got back later than expected, and, uh, that's a lot of requests. Looks like this is something I'll get done after the course of a few days. I'm not backing out of it regardless; just hold those horses tight, people.
submitted by FigN01[link] [90 comments]
Looking for open room for FCN
My friend and I are wanting to attend FCN and just realized we can actually make it his year. Is there anyone with a bit of extra space in their room? If so PM me and we can talk about details.
submitted by Cornbread_v2[link] [comment]
r/furry survey results! I edited the countries a bit so we could see a proper graph.
Ep. 64 - Dynamic Duo - If you have never listened to the show before, you probably shouldn't make this your first one......
Ep. 64 - Dynamic Duo - If you have never listened to the show before, you probably shouldn't make this your first one......
Furry Is Worried Her Words Are Not Comforting Troubled Mate
I am a 22 year old purple lion who has been in the fandom since I was about 8-9. I am what you call an optimistic pessimist, or pessimistic optimist. I am also a depressive, but it has yet to impact my ability to function. I live by the motto "Hope for the best, expect the worst."
I have been scanning the letters, and I feel that your advice is valid, even without being a therapist. So here is the issue:
My mate is an 18 year old, second semester college student. I have known him since he was 14, and have bonded with him since he was 16. I have known for a long time that he was anti-social at best, pessimistic at worst. Lately, though, events have been dragging him down like two boulders tied to his legs.
He has gotten into a couple of accidents lately, both his fault, though this latest one was barely a bump to the other car. However, because he is culpable according to the law, he is afraid that the other driver will make a claim, and his insurance will drop him. If it does, his mother will harp on him for a long time.
On top of this, college isn't going as well as he hoped, and it is backing up debt on him. He fears that he isn't going to earn his degree, and he claims that if that happens, he will begin to pull away because he “is not man enough” to provide for me.
I have told him time and again that his providing for me isn't an issue, that I want him and only him. I also know that he is the only mate for me, though we are yet to be married. I am terrified of him leaving, and am at the end of my rope how to help him. I have tried to tell him everything that I thought would help, but he is very much like me: stubborn to a fault.
Please spare some advice, Papabear: is there anything I can tell him that will at least provide stabilization for him? I don't think he's suicidal, but he could fade on me if things keep shaking up his hope.
Sincerely,
Worried Purplelion
* * *
Dear Purplelion,
I have dealt with this sort of thing myself. My former mate would get very depressed and at one point basically dropped out of life for a full year and did nothing but play online games. What did I do? Well, like you, I tried talking and talking and talking. I wanted to make my mate happy. But at one point she said, correctly, “You can’t make me happy. Only I can do that.” So, I stood back a bit. What I did was just reassure her that I was there for her and I continued to go to work, maintain the house, and just be there for her.
John Milton once wrote, “They also serve who only stand and wait.” One of the most difficult things to do in life is to simply wait, but it is a testament to your love when you do so, whether it is sitting in a hospital room waiting for a loved one to recover from an illness or injury, or simply trying to create a safe and secure home for your mate to live in while he or she struggles through a personal crisis.
You might not realize it, but the best thing you can do right now for your mate is provide him with a safe haven, a place he knows he can come to when he really needs it and where he knows he will not be judged or reprimanded, but loved unconditionally. He is not, apparently, getting that from his mother, so he needs that from you.
Talking to him about his problems only reminds him he does have problems and makes the pain worse. So, instead, create an air of normalcy around him. Have your meals together, do little things around the home, go out and eat a pizza. These things are enormously comforting to someone who is going through a rough time.
Showing you love someone through actions can be a thousand times more powerful that just saying it.
Good luck! Hugs!
Papabear
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