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Fursuit, halp
So I have been a furry for a while now, and I was thinking.... Why not make a fursuit? So, how do I make a fursuit, do I like buy one, do I need certain materials, should I be a certain height to fit the fursuit, just tell me what to do, to make a fursuit.
submitted by BlueSkilly[link] [11 comments]
People Act Differently toward Her When She Is Out of Her Fursuit
I've been reading through some of these asks, and I've been having a few issues so I thought I'd try and ask you one, so here goes nothing!
So, Papabear, I am a young biologically female furry. Kind of odd, I'm around 14 or so and female which is... to say the least, rather uncommon in the furry fandom. My parents are very tolerant, and let me go to conventions and fursuit, and my sister does the same.
However, I've noticed that while not in fursuit people tend to be very awkward or shy around me. Is it because they don't know how to act around females or young people?? How can I present myself to show I'm not some immature child that doesn't know what she's doing?
Thanks Papabear!
Maddie
* * *
Hi, Maddie,
Thank you for waiting for my reply. Papabear got behind on mail because of his recent move. Anyway, I’d first like to say that you should count yourself very lucky for having a family that loves you for you, furry or not, and lets you fursuit and do other fun furry stuff. You are a minority in that regard, moreso even than the fact that males outnumber females in the fandom.
As for furries acting differently around you when you are out of suit than when you are fursuiting, I believe that has more to do with interacting with your fursona vs. the real you than it does with your being a 14-year-old female. I’m a 47-year-old male, and furries act very differently around me when I am not in suit than they do when I am Grubbs. So, the reason doesn’t have to do with your age and gender.
What it has to do with is fantasy versus reality. Papabear strongly believes that many furries (not by any means a majority, but a lot) feel socially awkward in normal human-to-human relationships, and so a big reason why they adopt fursonas, especially those who wear fursuits, is to form a protective shield, if you will, that makes it easier to deal with the social world around them. Why? Because when in character it is not really “them” that is interacting with the world but another personality, and so if something bad happens, it happens to that other character, not really to them. Case in point: I am very different as Grubbs than I am in my human form. I could never get on stage and perform as Kevin, but I can do so as my bear self. I don’t feel shy or awkward anymore.
The same is kind of true in reverse. Many furries who are not wearing a fursuit find it easier to deal with a fursuiter than with a real person. When dealing with someone who looks like a husky or a horse or a lion or whatever, you aren’t dealing with a human, and so the normal human conventions that make one feel awkward disappear. Take off the head, and the social norms pop right back up, and you can actually see some furries shy away on the spot.
So, Maddie, Papabear doesn’t believe this has anything to do with anyone thinking you’re an “immature child.” I think you are imposing that interpretation upon the situation yourself. No, the real answer is the comparison of social interactions between those who are wearing masks and those who are not.
Hope that answers your question.
Bear hugs,
Papabear
Do not EVER search sly cooper or ratchet on FA.
KnotCast: Episode 202 – Fuzzy Navel
Tojo handles "critizism" of YCH auction
Seeking after my intrest was sparked.
Someone recently posted a pick of a species call the azu-nah and honestly I fell in love with the cute little deviles. I went onto felineflames deviant art profile to see if there was any stories involving the species but my phone will not let me send a note so I am turning to my fellow furry redditors to try and help me out. I would like some other form of contact with the artist or simply a story involving them since I want to learn more. If needed I cam provide one of my emails to give to the artist so I can speak one on one.
submitted by loki_the_sergal[link] [3 comments]
I am new to this, I need some help
I am thinking about becoming a part of the furry community, but I have no idea what I am suppose to do.
submitted by Natassjad[link] [13 comments]
TigerTails Radio Season 7 Episode 03
TigerTails Radio Season 7 Episode 03
Hedgie is missing from tonight's lineup, but that doesn't stop the rest of the crew from making a show which seemed to involve making Xavier go as red as possible though laughing, even while trying to drink his cola. This has something to do with oven doors, and blatent innudeno. This episode features TK, Xavier, and Felis and has backing music by Sanxion7. From: TigerTails Radio Views: 0
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People & Blogs Season 7 Episode 03 Podcast Uploaded
Hedgie is missing from tonight's lineup, but that doesn't stop the rest of the crew from making a show which seemed to involve making Xavier go as red as possible though laughing, even while trying to drink his cola. This has something to do with oven doors, and blatent innudeno. This episode features TK, Xavier, and Felis and has backing music by Sanxion7.
For Done and Dusted:
Xavier reviews The Amazing Spiderman.
TK spoils the film Ted.
Felis talks about the book Wearing The Cape.
Television Talk:
Merlin
Question of the Week:
What would you like to see in your Christmas stocking from Santa?
Links for Things During the Show:
Vote your Indie Game of the Year
Turducken Ducken
Sony's Creepy Teddy Bear
Download the Podcast - Watch the TubeCast
The Annie Awards Nominations for 2012
ASIFA Hollywood (part of the International Animated Film Society) announced the nominations for the 2012 Annie Awards this morning. These are the Oscars for animation, folks: Chosen and awarded by members of the animation industry, from writers and artists to animators and directors. As usual, there are a great selection of furry-oriented works among the nominees. This year the nominees for Best Animated Feature include Brave, Frankenweenie, Hotel Transylvania, ParaNorman, Rise of the Guardians, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, The Rabbi’s Cat, and Wreck-It Ralph. Interestingly, two of the “furriest” films of 2012, Madagascar 3 and Ice Age 4, were not nominated for Best Feature — though they were both nominated in other categories. Wreck-It Ralph seems to be the film to beat this year — though both it and Brave were nominated for 10 awards each, Brave was not nominated for Best Directing while Wreck-It Ralph was. For the television categories, furry-notable shows receiving multiple nominations included Adventure Time, Dragons: Riders of Berk, Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness, The Penguins of Madagascar, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, T.U.F.F. Puppy, and Doc McStuffins. Once again, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was absent from all categories. What is up with that? Anyway, the Annie Awards will be presented in a gala ceremony at UCLA’s Royce Hall on February 2nd of next year. The L.A. Times has a complete listing of the nominees, and tickets to the event can be purchased at the Annie Awards web site.
image c. 2012 Disney Animation
Season 7 Episode 03 is Live!
Check out the Listen page for details on how to listen in via a media player, or scroll down to the bottom of the Listen page for our YouTube link and watch us LIVE!
A Merry Christmas from Room 366 :)
The Second Wave of Furry
Furry is an evolving phenomenon. This article is an attempt to capture where our community is now, and how we got here.
Furry’s First Wave, its origin and consolidation as a unique phenomenon, lasted up until the turn of the century. Furry is currently in its Second Wave, a fast-growing adolescence.
The First Wave of furry is neatly captured in Retrospective: An Illustrated Chronology of Furry Fandom, hosted on Flayrah (http://www.flayrah.com/4117/retrospective-illustrated-chronology-furry-fandom-1966-1996).
The First Wave defined the furry community. Furry began as an offshoot of sci-fi fandom and almost immediately become notable for production of original anthropomorphic content. Furry had less of a focus toward pre-existing art than sci-fi fandom, and in this way furry started to transcend the usual boundaries of a fandom. Over time, furries started to explore the idea of “being” a furry, and a struggle developed between those who considered furry a part of their personal identity, and those who saw furry as a fandom. Furries roughly spilt into these two groups: so-called ‘lifestylers’ and ‘fans’.
Culture wars between the lifestylers and the fans defined the First Wave. The lifestylers openly incorporated sexuality into their identity. The fans were dismayed by the permissiveness shown towards extremes of behaviour, particularly where sex was involved. The furry fans put a premium on quality and family-friendliness, creating Yerf; the furry lifestylers put a premium on acceptance and open sexuality, creating VCL.
The fundamental conflict was simple. For the fans, furry was something you enjoy. For the lifestylers, furry was something you are.
The lifestylers won the culture wars and, in the Second Wave, have become the furry mainstream. There are still furry ‘fans’ however they have typically been around since the First Wave. Furry is a broad church and fans are not excluded: it’s simply that new furries tend to take up an animal-person identity with a species and a new name by default.
Furry is still maturing. Second Wave furries are continuing to explore the idea of furry identity, and also starting to consider the community’s culture and values.
(A note on terminology: I like ‘community’ as a description of our collective although ‘fandom’ is probably more common, and is used by other writers on this site. I’d argue that ‘fandom’ is deprecated because, while there are many fans within furry – anime, MLP, Redwall, etc – we are collectively not fans of anything in particular. This is where furry deviates from fandom: we created and propagate a furry universe, a virtual reality of animal-people that exists parallel to the real world.)
Early expressions of Second Wave furry included some conventions (notably ConFurence, which received a lot of criticism for being overtly sexual) and FurryMUCK. In these spaces, furries presented as if they were their animal-person avatar, a furry cultural norm that is now widely accepted. Most furry spaces are Second Wave although this is not always the case: arguably of the two Australian furry conventions, MiDFur (with occasional non-furry guests) is First Wave, whereas the newer Furry Down Under (with a focus on socializing and fursuiting) is Second Wave.
The maturation of furry is reflected in media coverage. During the First Wave, those willing to publicly discuss furry were often on the fringes of the group, and were largely selected to reinforce the freakshow element. Serious attempts to understand furry, such as a 2001 Vanity Fair article, were largely hijacked by furries who were unwilling or unable to act in a socially appropriate fashion. As I have said before here on [a][s], the most visible members of a minority are rarely the best ambassadors. The result was cringeworthy, and furries ran a mile from the image portrayed in the media.
This is no longer the case. Second Wave furries are collectively comfortable with the idea of furry as an identity. Media outlets, regardless of whether they have honourable intentions, are presented with a community that knows how to present itself. Coverage often tends to focus on the more unusual aspects of furry, or even the range of sexualities on display, but the overall vibe is usually one of disinterested acceptance. The visibility and city-wide acceptance of Anthrocon during its annual residency in Pittsburgh is a good example.
I saw Anthrocon’s Sam Conway speak a few years ago, and he went out of his way to talk about furries who held respectable positions in the real world. He mentioned furry aeronautical engineers, medical doctors, and the like. It was a speech from someone who was trying to convince himself – and his audience – that the First Wave furry stereotypes no longer apply. He was, like Ophelia*, protesting too much, as if he could will such a situation into being. They were the words of someone who had experienced the worst of the First Wave furry culture first-hand, where furry’s reputation was repeatedly tarnished in the media by extreme elements of the group.
Conway’s concerns are reasonable but out-of-date. Nowadays, the idea that furries might be innately unemployable is all but nonsensical.
However the perceptions of the furry group in the First Wave suffered from the actions of a visible minority. Furries distanced themselves from such behaviour, insisting that real furries are people who simply, “have an appreciation for anthropomorphic characters”.
Pre-emptively defensive sentiments like Conway’s persist on Wikipedia. There are hardworking wiki-guardians who maintain furry’s entry, the highest-profile source of information for someone unfamiliar with the community. It opens with:
“The furry fandom is a subculture interested in fictional anthropomorphic animal characters with human personalities and characteristics.”
The article provides an alternative definition of furry for “furry lifestylers”, quoting a line from Usenet that is about 20 years old:
“…a person with an important emotional/spiritual connection with an animal or animals, real, fictional or symbolic.”
Wikipedia’s portrayal of furry, like Conway’s speech, is firmly First Wave. We no longer need to act so defensively: our collective image is no longer shaped by a few outliers.
Fandom, as opposed to furry, is still largely perceived as a collection of social rejects. In many cases it’s reasonably applicable: if you are obsessed with Hamtaro (say), it’s likely that you are either very young or you have a very limited relationship with the wider world. The stereotype of the narrow-minded geek, that of Comic Book Guy or the stock action-figure-collecting sitcom character, is one of fandom. Furries are still pretty geeky and fandom-oriented – 61% of us describe ourselves as ‘a fan of science fiction’ (Ref Furry Survey) – but it’s no longer the driving force of our community.
(I don’t want to suggest that fandom geeks are any better or worse than furries. I’m merely trying to describe the progression from furry’s First Wave and its fandom origins, to today’s Second Wave. I appreciate that my embrace of fandom stereotypes is reductive and possibly a little insulting. I mean to say that fans will be over-represented by Comic Book Guy, not that all fans are like that.)
Furry media is largely Second Wave. Our social sites – Fur Affinity, Inkbunny, Sofurry – are Second Wave almost by definition, as furries socialize nearly exclusively as animal-people. Meta furry sites, like Flayrah and [adjective][species], who look at furry with a critical eye, are also Second Wave. There are still echoes of the First Wave culture wars however these are largely marginalized to ‘below the line’ forums, comment threads, and the juvenalia of 4Chan and Encyclopaedia Dramatica.
One of furry’s greatest features is that it is decentralized. We do not have a universally-respected figurehead or a formal code of conduct. Our culture and our community are fluid. Our most useful tools are those which allow furries to come together as a loose collective: conventions, social media, art depositories.
As we grow – and we are growing worldwide, fast – our culture is consolidating. New furries learn to abide by the unwritten rules of the pre-existing furry culture. This maturation is the furry Second Wave. Keep your whiskers erect and your ears perked for signs of the next step forward.
* corrected typo on 20-Dec-12 spotted by the furcast.fm crew. Thanks guys.
![[link]](http://i.imgur.com/FcVZs.jpg){kind=link}
![[link]](http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs14/f/2006/365/1/f/Azu_nah_species_sheet_by_felineflames.jpg){kind=link}