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submitted by Saamstraat
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submitted by Verok_the_Dragon
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submitted by CustodianoftheDice
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Have you ever tried to delineate your past into phases? And not necessarily based on school. I mean, school and work do tend to serve as markers for a lot of our perception of time, and it seems almost habitual that we use them to mark out the periods in our lives. When I grew up, you went to preschool to prepare for kindergarten, which prepared you for elementary school. Fifth grade prepared you for middle school, and eighth grade for high school. Naturally, your senior year of high school prepared you for college, which prepared you for work, which helped you towards retirement, which seemed to be the best bit of all. Four years old, five, eleven, fourteen, eighteen, twenty-two, sixty-five.

When I was growing up, it all seemed right and natural. Right up until half way through my fifth-grade year, when I had just turned eleven. My parents had divorced when I was very young, and I’d spent my years up until that point living primarily with my mom. It was decided, though, once I left elementary school, that I would go live with my dad. That threw a wrench into the idyllic progression of years: where my dad lived, elementary school was kindergarten through sixth grade, not fifth, and middle school was replaced with junior high school.

If I were feeling particularly cheeky, I could blame most of this article on the turmoil caused by early recognition that, in River Tam’s words, “day” is a vestigial mode of time measurement based on solar cycles, and really this was just all made up to make the paperwork easier. (I don’t, however, think that would give me a pass from the fact that I spent seven years in university, rather than four. That’s all on me.)

Whatever the reason, I stopped thinking of these seemingly arbitrary points in time as the true demarcation of childhood from adolescence or adolescence from adulthood. Maybe this is something that everyone goes through at some point in their lives, realizing that some things are just creative fictions.

It’s not that school didn’t have an effect on me. Like many, I suffer from cyclical bouts of depression in varying degrees of severity that, for several years, followed the schedule of school, rather than the amount of light in my days. I’d get strongly depressed around spring break, clear up around the end of school, get a little depressed mid-summer when I’d previously switched from living with my mom to living with my dad, then get extra anxious and depressed around the time that school started. College, with its emphasis on finals and its month-long winter holiday, added an additional kink in the middle of December when hell-week struck.

For a while – a more depressed while – I used these shifts in mood to mark the time. It’s difficult, when one is depressed, to think of depression as anything other than a tiresome, inescapable bore. Depression, as Andrew Solomon puts it, isn’t the opposite of happiness, it’s the opposite of vitality. The end of summer would start to swing around and I’d sigh to myself and think, “Time to batten down the hatches.”

Once I got deeper into college and these issues worsened, the seasonal clock shifted to something even shorter. A day, at its shortest, was divided up into an anxiety of the hours: Matins of suicidal ideation, Lauds of self-deprecation, Vespers of procrastination and loathing.

By the time that I started on serious medication for mental health (and not sneakily hiding kava, 5-HTP, and St. John’s Wort from my mom – sorry mom), I had all but broken my life down into three segments. There was BA – before anxiety, A – anxiety, and AM – after medication. Or, to take it in a more morbid direction, BSA and ASA – before and after suicide attempt.

Needless to say, I’m less jaded about the life that I lead, these days.

With time, I’ve gained more strength in the areas of introspection and retrospection. In introspection lies the ability to adequately assess one’s state of being, the set and setting around one. I can see that, somewhere in that mire of the A years, I managed to find my way into a relationship, a house, and a pretty neat job. In retrospection lies the ability to track my course through life from where I stand now, even if I couldn’t see it at the time. I could see that anxiety was a sort of tool that I leveraged to get me where I am today, though at a high cost.

Naturally, the immediate thing I leapt to with that newly strengthened retrospection is dividing my life up into two eras: BF – before furry, and AF – after furry.

As with gender identity and sexual orientation, furry was one of those things that made a lot of sense in retrospect, what with all those games of pretending to be a mouse or a cat (seriously, that occupied all of elementary school; it’s a wonder I held out as long as I did). That said, unlike other aspects of identity, there was a definite date to me finding furry (Yerf!, in late 2000), so it was easier to give it a hard and fast cut-over date.

More and more, as time goes by, I’ve settled on something both a little more subtle and a lot more fine-grained to mark the passage of time: the flow of various friendships within my life.

The early years, in elementary and middle school, I wound up finding myself in varied friend-groups related primarily to a few vague interests. I was super into drawing for a while, and into Star Wars, and the movie Tremors. Later, I got more into music, and even started composing brief melodies in fourth grade. Middle school saw an increased fascination with the mind and spirituality, and I even snuck a bible into the house to read at one point, after Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha got me thinking about the subject of religion in its own roundabout way.

Through out all of that, I found friends to go along with my interests. Some friends and I shared sketchbooks, while others played with me in the sandbox, making holes in the sand like in Tremors. I talked music with a violinist friend and talked spirituality with a buddhist friend.

This followed me into furry, as well. I talked about They Might Be Giants with Rela, joked about Discordianism with Rela and Louis. I talked about music and math and growing up with Kanu, who later became Melekh, and about poetry with an otter named Mondriaan. I spent countless hours talking about computers with Kanja, and about growing up with countless other teens on FluffMUCK.

These were the friendships of the past that I had formed. They delineate my past into my own small bildungsroman, a coming of age tale told through interactions with furries online, more complete than would one built on the strict litany of school.

Through this time I also formed friendships that endured. I talked about growing up and being grown up with Shanerak, who became Tabernak. Ryan and I spoke about spirituality and food, all the way back from second grade on. I talked about language and Teilhard de Chardin with Rikoshi (well, not just, but we do like us some Jesuit philosophy at times). Danish and I have stuck together in our own way over the years, as have Floid and I, each for our own reasons. Some friendships are built well for time, burning slowly and steadily throughout the years while others have flashed brightly and been all the more intense for the afterimages they leave behind after fading.

I’ve had friendships that have floundered for a while, and then then returned, as well as frienships that have spring anew as who I have become has changed over the years. It’s my own divine office, the liturgy of my life as told through friendship. Hour by hour, I fill my life with prayers of friendship – supplication, invocation, adoration, meditation, and even extemporaneous rejoicing in those in my life.

I don’t mean to simply wax poetic about how much friendship means to me, though it means a lot. I think that this is important to me particularly because I am shown the person I was at the time when the friendship was important to me, often because of the reason for the friendship. As I delved more and more into music, I became friends with more and more people who loved talking about music, which was reenforcement in a way, helping me to keep going along the path of a musician. In other cases, friends became inspiration for what would eventually become a large part of my life, such as John and Josiah, who both got me so deep into programming that I wound up working as a software developer after college.

Welcome to Furry! You probably won't have kids while you're here, but you sure will raise a lot of teenagers.

— Dammit Path (@pathhyena) August 27, 2015

In this sense, furry came at the perfect time for me, as it showed up right as several psychological preferences and aspects of identity were solidifying, leading to some of the longest-lasting friendships that I’ve formed in life. It was with these animal people that I came into my own, became an individual person and wound up maturing into the fox that I am today. I followed along with others as they figured out their sexuality and came out to their parents, just as I did. I trailed eagerly along behind braver folks than I as they plowed through the territory of gender identity, laying down paths that I could follow. And in so many of these cases, the friends of mine were furries. In fact, although I do have numerous friends outside of the fandom, those who are furries outnumber those who are not by a vast amount.

Furry is important in this way, and not just to me personally. It goes beyond my own experiences. Furry is a network of friendships, above all. It is made up of individuals sharing something together, learning from each other and leading the way for those who come after. A few friends and I got into furry with enough seriousness early on in high school that we wound up on FluffMUCK, and from there, others led me down various paths into the fandom. I can credit much of my interest in programming to furries, as well as in writing and my tastes in visual art, and I can only hope I’m doing a good job of providing an example in my own small way.

This is how I divvy up my life into meaningful pieces. I think less of how I spent six years at one elementary school and one at the other, and less of how my life was slowly taken over by mental illness until I regained control. I think more of the time I spent on FluffMUCK, the house with Ryan and Shannon, the weeks where I would look forward to Fort Fur Fridays, our local meet, with an intensity that baffled my non-furry partner at the time. I measure the seasons by conventions more often than by mood swings, these days, and it feels pretty good.

It feels good to know that there are folks out there being the best foxes, dragons, and cats that they can be, and having a really great time of it. And it makes me wonder how I’ve marked the hours of the lives of the people I’ve known. I don’t talk to Rela or Louis or Kanu anymore, but do they ever think back to that gawky fox named Ranna, that high school kid in need of a friend group who found it online with a bunch of other furs? How much pain have I caused to help mark the time? How much pleasure? How many bored conversations have I been a part of that others occasional think back on and laugh?

It’s not a melancholy thought, to know that lives have pain in them, though it is honest. And it’s not worth lying about the fact that pain is sometimes caused by others or by yourself, because it very much can be. After all, we are often the source of our greatest pleasures as well. It’s just worth knowing that you’re someone’s springtime, that others can be there for you through winter and summer both. And really, what better way to mark the time than with friends?

submitted by vriskas3rket
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submitted by stonerhippiemutt
[link] [5 comments]

submitted by PrettyOkayMrFox
[link] [7 comments]

Hello,

I’ve never done something like this before so ill try to do this as best as I can. I have a friend whose sona name is Ekedo, although I call him Eke. He's terribly lonely and is yearning for a mate.

In a Facebook group that I monitor, people have been talking about how they've had sex and stuff and how they plowed such and such and sucked such and such. It made Eke jealous, furious even. It made his rage worse when someone that I knew blabbed about how me, him and another had our own session. He hated me dearly for that.... I tried talking to him and he told me that he had tried everything to find someone be his area to be with and have sex with. He’s still really mad at me, but I made a promise to him that I’d try my best to help him in anyway I can.

I have a bad feeling that I wont be able to keep this promise. But I don’t want to lose him. I’ve lost too many good friends. If I made any mistakes or I didn’t explain correctly, please tell me. This is my first time after all. Thank you for your help and for giving me your attention.

Nekuro Wakahiza (age 19)

* * *

Dear Nekuro,
 
Eke seems to be mad at you and other furries out of pure jealousy. That he hates you because you had sex really testifies to a severe lack of emotional maturity on his part, sad to say. You certainly should not feel guilty for having a fun sex life just because Eke lacks one, and you should not apologize for it. If Eke were a mature, self-confident individual, he would feel happy for you.

Likewise, if Eke is upset by people posting online about their sex lives, then it is easy enough for him to avoid those pages (including your—moderated?—furry page). There are lots and lots of websites, furry and not, that don’t have people on them crowing about whose parts they had in their mouths (oh, and by the way, appalling for people to brag about such things—keep it in the bedroom and keep it private, folks; boasting about your sex life is also extremely immature and offensive, and this is coming from a bear who enjoys kinky sex, so muzzle it).

Eke also seems to equate relationships purely with sex. Let’s face it, he’s horny and wants to get off. Nekuro, it is not your job to help Eke get laid. Eke needs to stop blaming others for his problems and look inside himself. I could see why others might find such a jealous and whiny person off-putting. If you wish to help him, then help him work on himself.

The best way to do this is to boost his self-confidence. Identify those qualities that Eke has that are admirable and may attract other people, and work on those. You can, if you are up for it, encourage him and be his cheerleader. Eke needs to feel more comfortable in his own skin before he goes out to share said skin with others, comprenez vous? Understood?

In short, don’t feel guilty about your sex life and don’t apologize for it; encourage Eke to visit sites and social networking pages that don’t obsess about sex; and help him work on his ego a bit.
You’re a good friend for caring, but don’t let Eke’s emotional issues drag you down.
​
Hugs,
Papabear

submitted by YellowBandanaDog
[link] [1 comment]

It’s a belief demonstrated with skill by Jill, the highly demanded maker at Jillcostumes.  Her quote appears in The Fursuit of Happiness: High Fashion in Furry Fandom – an article from July 2015 at Racked (a style and beauty industry news site owned by Vox Media). The author is Sydney Parker, a journalist who previously wrote about furries for Splitsider, a news site about […]

submitted by Verok_the_Dragon
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submitted by VentKazemaru
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submitted by TakeMyKnot
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submitted by TheVloginator
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My sona has a particular look, and it's hard to find artists who draw robotics for a reasonable price. Can anyone here recommend me an artist, or shamefully advertise themselves?

submitted by Pariah_The_Pariah
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submitted by ReifuTD
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submitted by RaccoonLoon
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Everyone communicates, acknowledges others, pokes at each other, does nice things for other users. It's really interesting how you guys and girls act. People know your name, some of you are sort of popular on here like Espurra or disco or ringar. It's kinda what made me stay here, just to see what you all would do next. You guys are awesome people and I hope you understand that.

submitted by Foxes281
[link] [62 comments]

Dated October 7, here is an article by Matt Baume in The Stranger, an alternative weekly newspaper in Seattle, Washington:
http://www.thestranger.com/features/feature/2015/10/07/22972145/being-a-furry-can-change-your-life

The article relates the author's experiences at the recent RainFurrest convention, and includes interviews with MetalFox, Kyell Gold, Phin, Kappy, Kilo, and Buni.

Two weekends ago, I drove to the SeaTac Hilton and parked in a distant overflow lot. I was wondering if I was in the right place until I spotted a giant fuzzy bat standing on the sidewalk. When traffic cleared, the bat lifted its wings and scampered across the road, flapping as furiously as an actual winged creature would. There was no one else present. This was not a performance for anyone's benefit. This was a person in a head space so complete, they were no longer a person at all.

Inside, the lobby of the hotel looked like Noah's ark. Most people had at least some furry ears or a tail. They chatted in small groups, with a few on all fours, barking. Others gathered around a table, stitching costumes. There was a large room set up for game consoles, and a dealer's den where you could buy animal-shaped pillows, or furry romance novels, or snacks, or porn.

I started talking with a furry who told me his name was MetalFox. As we were waiting for the elevator, he said, "The first photo I ever had with a furry was a reindeer who visited the hospital. I had a few weeks left to live. It was Christmas."

Next to us stood a rat holding a slice of pizza, and a six-foot-tall blue jay. Neither one batted an eye at his story, and indeed they couldn't have even if they wanted to—their eyes were plastic mesh embedded in masks of synthetic fur.

Furries are people who think of themselves as animals, or at least nonhuman avatars. They might dress up in costume, or they might not; they might express themselves through role-play, they might be kinky, they might keep their furriness a secret; or they might do none of those things. Some have known they're furry since childhood, others only realized their affinity later in life. You could be a furry right now without even knowing it.

Personally, I've wondered if I harbored my own secret fur for years. As a kid, I wished my friends could be more like the frolicsome rabbit family in Disney's Robin Hood. In college, I went through a phase where I taped a drawing of a kitten over my student ID photo and said "meow" when shaking hands, until a financial-aid officer frowned and ordered me to remove the picture while he watched. Then last August, I dressed up as the Nintendo character Fox McCloud for a video-game party. I have no qualms about stripping down for underwear parties—I'm hopeless at putting together an outfit, and usually it's less embarrassing to simply wear none at all. But the thought of dressing up in furry ears and a fox tail stressed me out. I was definitely going to be made fun of, right? Well, no—as soon as I slipped into the costume, my ever-present social stress simply vanished. I felt cute. People like Fox, and when I was wearing his fur at the party, people liked me. I walked home that night with the tail still swaying at my hip, not caring who saw me, and wondering: What had I just unlocked?

Which is partly how I ended up at Rainfurrest, which drew 2,500 to the SeaTac Hilton this year. Though attendees might be human in their mundane lives, by the time they walked through the revolving door of the lobby, their ears had become pointed and their tails extended from their butts. Furry sleeves adorned their arms, and their noses had been blackened until they were foxes and Charmanders and pterodactyls and elk.

A few folks clustered by the entrance, gawking at an alpaca—a real alpaca, not a person in a costume. The convention raises thousands of dollars each year for the Cougar Mountain Zoo.

MetalFox leads Rainfurrest's charitable wing. A few years back, he told me, he realized that he'd reached all of the goals in his human life. He had a dream job (IT administrator) and a home, and he'd survived leukemia against the odds. What was left? His fursona provided an answer: giving back. "He's a character I wish I could be," MetalFox told me. "My fursona helps other people."

"So why the wings?" I asked, looking at a drawing he held of a fox hovering majestically in the clouds.

"I just love flying," he said. "After Challenge Air." That's a charity started by a pilot that takes special-needs children on flights. MetalFox had been treated to a flight while hospitalized with leukemia, and the idea of benefactors descending from the sky left such an impression that he had re-created it in his very identity.

Recently, MetalFox helped a friend overcome suicidal depression by introducing her to an informal furry social circle. Now on the mend, the friend helps other furries facing similar hardships, forming a chain of support that moves from furry to furry. As MetalFox described the community's emotional continuity, a wisp of synthetic white fur drifted between us, blown from a distant creature by the air conditioning. MetalFox plucked the tuft from the air, rubbed it between his fingers, and then released it into a breeze that carried it through a pack of lounging wolves. I felt like I was in the presence of a guru.

"Was helping her stressful for you?" I asked. He nodded, and for just a moment I saw the hesitation of the man behind the fursona.

"I was not able to take on that responsibility," the human said, then smiled, "but MetalFox was able to." He cast his gaze across the room, where a person in a dingo costume was locked in loving embrace with an inflatable dragon.

"The theme of being comfortable with who you are is something I learned about through furry fandom," Kyell Gold said. He's the author of several romance novels, including Out of Position, about a gay tiger that plays college football. Kyell's novels focus on personal exploration and coming to terms with one's true nature, a process he himself underwent: Earlier in life, he studied chemical engineering, then multinational management, and then got an MA in zoology. During that time, he started writing furry romance, and when he was laid off from a tech job in 2010, his partner—also a furry—helped him launch a writing career.

"There are a lot of people who come to this place because they don't feel welcome where they are," Kyell told me. A man in a partial raccoon suit strolled past waving giant orange feather-boa fans, eliciting friendly waves from a group of college-age boys who were busy helping each other into dog costumes. "And they can learn who they are here," Kyell finished.

What was I learning about myself? Were these my people? I certainly felt a geeky kinship. Furries are a diverse crowd, but certain interests seemed so common, they were near-universal.

Seattle might just have the rest of the world beat when it comes to those interests. In addition to Rainfurrest, we also host Emerald City Comicon, FIRST Robotics, GeekGirlCon, BrickCon (for Lego enthusiasts), Sakura-Con (anime), ZomBcon (the undead), PAX Prime (games), and the Monsters of Accordion tour. Seattle isn't home to the largest furry convention in the country—that would be Anthrocon in Pittsburgh, which draws crowds of more than 6,000. But we have the best homegrown crop of nerds, and you can bet that attendees of Rainfurrest see each other at other local geek gatherings throughout the year.

"I'm also a Brony," said Phin, as he plunged an air hose into a blue vinyl orca balloon and let it slowly inflate. He was wearing a Dr. Who shirt. "I'm also in the 501st." He just assumed that I would know that the 501st is a group of Star Wars cosplayers. He was correct.

"When you're a geek, you find yourself restraining yourself," Phin went on. "If I told my coworkers I was here, inflating animals, what do you think they'd say?" Around us, a half dozen pool toys, twice as large as a regular person, wobbled back and forth. They'd been custom-made for thousands of dollars, and there were stern admonishments to leave all sharp objects outside the room.

As he spoke, I idly stroked a bundle of fur in my jacket pocket. I'd just been to a workshop where we were supplied with patterns and materials to build our own tails. I chose a bunny pattern, and as I stitched the fabric, I flirted with a boy in a sharply tailored vest. Like me, he was thin, fair, and soft-spoken. By day, he directed maritime traffic for the coast guard. But when he's off the clock, he told me, he's a rabbit.

"I can see that," I said, and somehow I really could. Rabbits have a way of finding each other, I guess.

"I'm super shy, so friends don't always come easy," Kappy told me. She was a blue raccoon, in full costume except that she had placed her furry head on the table in front of her so she could sip coffee. Role-playing as an animal wiped away the stress of socializing, which is why she was so comfortable spending time with friends like Kilo, who sat next to her.

"This is the only time I'm able to throw on the suit and have fun," Kilo said. "I would love to be silly all the time. But I catch myself. When I'm in a suit, I have freedom." When he's not in the suit, he studies diesel technology and welding in a small conservative Idaho town, and he goes to great lengths to ensure that no one will ever find out who he really is.

I could sympathize with their relief at finding a way to interact without anxiety. I'd had to walk past their table three times before I worked up the nerve to introduce myself.

"I discovered werewolves in the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual when I was 9," Buni told me as we sat in the hotel courtyard. At a bench nearby, a bearded man gently stroked the rainbow mane of a unicorn with bulging chest muscles.

"The notion of not-quite-human struck a note in the same way as not-quite-male did when I was 17," Buni said. "When you look at a mirror and you see something that is not-quite-you looking back."

For most of her life, in conflicts between the head and the heart, she'd always gone with her head, resigning herself to reality as it was. For years, she had presented as male and lingered at the periphery of the furry community, quietly empathizing more with the werewolves than the heroes in horror films. Then one night, a furry friend asked her: "Are you serious about this? Or are you a hanger-on?"

"It was a shock to the system," Buni said. "Like when a kid gets caught wearing his mom's clothes for the first time." She was 19 and closeted, not even out to herself about being trans. "I had got as far as figuring out that I wasn't straight and not wholly male."

But as she began exploring online communities and flying across the country to attend meet-ups, she realized, "There are elements of self that I can control... I could transition. I got to decide what life meant."

As Buni spoke, a little girl ran around a corner, tripped on the sidewalk, and started to cry. The rainbow unicorn saw what had happened and clopped over to hug and comfort her.

Meeting a snow leopard named Keet at a furry gathering hastened Buni's transformation. At the time, Keet also presented as male, and as soon as they found each other, Buni said, they were "old friends who just met." Keet moved across the country to start a home with Buni, and they transitioned together.

"Everyone has that potential to find the furry," Buni said. "The pony. The crystal gem. It's finding the right key... finding that way of expressing that self, because we don't know we're allowed to look for it." At this point, I momentarily considered firing my therapist and asking Buni if we could set up weekly sessions.

When I got home, my partner James asked, "Did you find your people?"

"I don't know!" I said. "Maybe?" I showed him the tail I'd made, and then I noticed the mound of dishes that had accumulated in the sink during just the few hours I was away. "Are you fucking kidding me?" I exclaimed, and started to berate him about making a mess. This is my typical response to anything that triggers my cleanliness anxiety—lashing out with blame.

"What the fuck is this?" I demanded, pointing at an unwashed cheese grater.

"Uh. Hold on," he said, grabbing a clip from a bag of chips and using it to affix the bunny tail to the back of my pants.

"Oh," I said, considering. I wiggled my butt and felt the weight of it.

Suddenly, I was thinking about a peaceful woodland bunny nibbling grass, and a comforting stuffed rabbit named Buttons that I loved as a child, and that one rabbit that became internet-famous for balancing pancakes on his head. Relaxing, peaceful, tranquil thoughts. Staring at the tail, I could remember all of those images in an instant. But I couldn't remember why the dishes were worth getting in a fight over.

"Are you still stressed out?" James asked.

"No," I said. It takes a lot more than that to stress out a bunny.

So, as you all know, I posted a fun survey for you fuzz butts and I got over 270 responses. This is as of 5:45 am at my place, CTZ. Here are the results.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1rB3a58enQO2nbI6_WdXWLq_6sMZuFEbaaK2NAAdU0pU/viewanalytics

Edit: I fixed it so you all should be able to view it with the link. If you have any questions to suggest, please post them down. And I'm sorry avians, I forgot to put you down. Have a nice Wednesday!

submitted by topaz_colite
[link] [13 comments]