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The furry fandom is a subculture interested in fictional anthropomorphic animal characters with human personalities and characteristics.[1] Examples of anthropomorphic attributes include exhibiting human intelligence and facial expressions, the ability to speak, walk on two legs, and wear clothes. Furry fandom is also used to refer to the community of people who gather on the Internet and at furry conventions.[2]
{{heresy}}
{{promotions}}
[[Image:BAWWW.jpg|right|thumb|Fig. a: This furry is not making any friends here.]]
{{Topquote|I have run with the tigers and I know wild beasts better than the priests. Animals are neither gods nor fiends, but men in their way without the lust and greed of man.|Kull, Exile of Atlantis}}
''If you're looking for actual /tg/ races that are based on the principle of "humanoid animal", see [[Beastfolk]].''


Contents  [hide]
''Alternatively, if you’re looking for the Chaos God from which furries emanate, see [[Slaanesh]]. ''
1 History
2 Inspiration
3 Activities
3.1 Crafts
3.2 Role-playing
3.3 Conventions
3.4 Websites and online communities
4 Furry lifestylers
5 Sexual aspects
6 Public perception and media coverage
7 See also
8 References
9 External links
History
According to fandom historian Fred Patten, the concept of furry originated at a science fiction convention in 1980,[3] when a character drawing from Steve Gallacci’s Albedo Anthropomorphics started a discussion of anthropomorphic characters in science fiction novels. This led to the formation of a discussion group that met at science fiction conventions and comics conventions.


The specific term furry fandom was being used in fanzines as early as 1983, and had become the standard name for the genre by the mid-1990s, when it was defined as "the organized appreciation and dissemination of art and prose regarding 'Furries', or fictional mammalian anthropomorphic characters."[4] However, fans consider the origins of furry fandom to be much earlier, with fictional works such as Kimba, The White Lion released in 1965, Richard Adams' novel Watership Down, published in 1972 (and its 1978 film adaptation), as well as Disney's Robin Hood as oft-cited examples.[3] To distinguish these personae from seriously depicted animal characters, such as Lassie or Old Yeller, cartoon animals are referred to as funny animals.[5]
A '''Furry''' (not to be confused with '''fury''', which they tend to create) are people who are (often obsessive) fans of anthropomorphic animals. Some furries are merely keen on Disney, the Rats of NIMH, [[My Little Pony]], or Usagi Yojimbo (these are the tolerable ones); at the other end of the spectrum lie the [[FAIL|Otherkin]], people who [[What|genuinely believe]] that they are animals or dragons trapped inside human bodies. Some furries make and wear fursuits in an attempt to resemble their avatars in real life, which tends to make the participants look ridiculous most of the time unless the costume is well made (which, credit where credit is due, happens extraordinarily often) or they're at a con full of them (and even then...).


During the 1980s, furry fans began to publish fanzines, developing a diverse social group that eventually began to schedule social gatherings. By 1989, there was sufficient interest to stage the first furry convention.[6] Throughout the next decade, the Internet became accessible to the general population and became the most popular means for furry fans to socialize.[7] The newsgroup alt.fan.furry was created in November 1990, and virtual environments such as MUCKs also became popular places on the Internet for fans to meet and communicate.[8]
The Furry community is ostensibly based mostly in meritocratic elitism, with good [[drawfags]] in the upper levels of their social pyramid and the average Disney/Warner Brothers' animation fanboy in the lowest. Drama, misanthropy and other emo behaviors are very common in the hierarchy, often representing humankind as sociopathic or genocidal in their literary works or comics. Many furry comics have a homosexual or bisexual theme, not unlike anime; while there are many LGBTQ+ individuals and supporters in the furry community, there are also many [[Tumblr|"safe havens"]] that are host to furries often overlap with those accepting of gay communities. For what it's worth, the non-furry parts of those communities only consider them a problem when they go ''bashit fucking crazy''.


[[Image:FurryInANutshell.jpg|left|thumb|The diverse constituencies of the furry community in a nutshell.]]
Furries get a lot of hate in a lot of places on the internet, which stems form several sources; a big one is the really insecure subtype of furry who posts their "fursona" on deviantART and proceeds to spew bile at anyone who doesn't kiss their ass about it. Another big part of it is the type of furry most commonly referred to by /tg/ and 4chan, which is the erotic furry, also known as the "furvert", which is a specific sexual fetish for anthropomorphic animals. Erotic furries are fond of [[cybering|cybersex]], which they refer to as "yiffing", supposedly for the sound a fox makes while copulating. There are fewer erotic furries in the furry community than the average fa/tg/uy believes, but also more of them than the average furry will admit to[[Slaanesh|(The number cited is often around 66% of furries are in some way there for the sex)]]. While sexual attraction to anthropomorphic animals *by itself* isn't too deviant or disturbing, the problem is that like many fetishes it has an odd tendency to occur in conjunction with other, more extreme ones (more on that in a bit). Because of these various factors, this type of furry is considered by 4chan, out of all possible factions, as the vilest and most nauseating form of [[heresy]] in all of existence, with only the ultimate [[Exterminatus|Banhammer]] as the solution. [[What|Even to the point where *all* forms of furry porn are banned on /d/, a board that accepts pretty much everything else, even outright felonies like rape.]]


An anthropomorphic vixen (female fox), a typical furry character
Antipathy toward furries on /tg/ and 4chan runs high principally due to a profound weariness with thin-skinned furries complaining of [[Lulz|"fursecution"]] (but the irony that this has partially legitimized their claims has not gone wholly unnoticed). If you are a furry and feel the need to talk about it, the best way to survive on /tg/ is to admit from the outset that you are a sick bastard and that you don't expect anyone to praise you for it. (Addendum: Since 40k has very little to do with the fandom, it's generally safe to just not refer to yourself as one, lest ye call down the collective nerd rage of the fa/tg/uys on you, as shown in fig. a.) Furry threads make for very effective [[troll]]ing experience, especially if erotic furry art is involved.
The furry fandom is male-dominated, with surveys reporting around 80% male respondents.[9][10][11]


Inspiration
[[File:Unconventional Armour.jpg|250px|right|thumb|/tg/ bitches about anthropomorphic animals all the time in sci-fi and fantasy settings, yet they have a insatiable fetish for cat women in skimpy armor. The irony is real.]]
Allegorical novels, including works of both science fiction and fantasy, and cartoons featuring anthropomorphic animals are often cited as the earliest inspiration for the fandom.[3] A survey conducted in 2007 suggested that, when compared to a non-furry control group, a higher proportion of those self-identifying as furries liked cartoons "a great deal" as children and recalled watching them significantly more often, as well as being more likely to enjoy works of science fiction than those outside of the community.[12]
In a somewhat [[Irony|ironic twist]], /tg/'s burning hatred for furries is what allowed /tg/ to come into being; [[Warhammer Wednesday]] was created as a direct response to furries attempting to spam /b/ every day of the week. The popularity of this day caught Moot's attention, leading to the creation of the /tg/ board.


Activities
Furries have their own RPGs, most notably ''[[Ironclaw]]'', and its Asian themed companion book ''Jadeclaw'', as well as ''[[Furry Pirates]]'' and ''[[Albedo]]''.
According to a survey from 2008, most furries believe that visual art, conventions, literature, and online communities are strongly important to the fandom.[10]


Crafts
/tg/, /v/, /x/ and other boards (not really /b/, because half of them are furfags anyways) have a profound hatred for all things furry and will [[Exterminatus|rage, sage, kill, maim and ultimately burn]] the thread into the desolate wastelands of 404. (Any thread you may happen to see featuring monstergirls, centaurs, gnolls, or other sexualized sapient creatures is merely a figment of your imagination.)


Sculpture by Wicked Sairah at Further Confusion
Note: some furfags like to take it to the extreme and have recently tried to take /tg/ for themselves, only to have to resort to copious amounts of samefagging after the majority of fa/tg/uys got bored of saging their threads into oblivion. It is also theorized that furfags that invade /tg/ usually come from the bottomless pit of horror called tgchan.
Fans with craft skills create their own plush toys, sometimes referred to as plushies, and also build elaborate costumes called fursuits,[13] which are worn for fun or to participate in parades, convention masquerades, dances, or fund-raising charity events (as entertainers).[14] Fursuits range from designs featuring simple construction and resembling sports mascots[12] to those with more sophisticated features that include moving jaw mechanisms, animatronic parts, prosthetic makeup, and other features. Fursuits range in price from $500, for mascot-like designs, to an upwards of $10,000 for models incorporating animatronics.[15] While about 80% of furries do not own a full fursuit,[9][10][12] often citing their expensive cost as the decisive factor,[12] a majority of them hold positive feelings towards fursuiters and the conventions in which they participate.[9][10] Some fans may also wear "partial" suits consisting simply of ears and a tail, or a head, paws, and a tail.[12]


Furry fans also pursue puppetry, recording videos and performing live shows such as Rapid T. Rabbit and Friends and the Funday PawPet Show, and create furry accessories, such as ears or tails.[16]
Scalies are anthropomorphic creatures of the reptile and amphibian variety. As furries are nicknamed such for their humanoid shape covered in fur, scalies tend to have a coating of scales much like the animals they represent. However, some scalies, including draconids, have very light or no true scales, but flesh more like a human's.  


Scalies are also furry fans with a preference for lizard, reptile, dragon and dinosaur characters and themes. It is also a self-moniker for the users of alt.fan.dragons, a Usenet discussion group for all things drakōn. They are not to be confused with [[dragonborn]] (because they don't ask to be fucked and raped constantly).


Role-playing
Anthropomorphic animal characters created by furry fans, known as fursonas,[17] are used for role-playing in MUDs,[18] on internet forums, or on electronic mailing lists.[19] A variety of species are employed as the basis of these personas, although many furries (for example over 60% of those surveyed in 2007) choose to identify themselves with carnivorans.[12][20] The longest-running online furry role-playing environment is FurryMUCK, although it has been eclipsed in the area of text-mode role-playing by Tapestries MUCK. Another popular online furry social game is called Furcadia, created by Dragon's Eye Productions. There are also several furry-themed areas and communities in the virtual world Second Life.[21]


Role-playing also takes place offline, with petting, hugging and "scritching" (light scratching and grooming) common between friends at social gatherings.[7] Fursuits or furry accessories are sometimes used to enhance the experience.
The real question is are birds scalies or furries?  <s>Maybe [[beakie|beakies]]?</s> {{BLAM}}
==Yiffing==
{{heresy}}
[[File:Damn Furry DMs.JPG|thumb|right|A 'typical' furry [[/d/M]] in action.]]
Yiffing refers to sex between furries, and is most commonly used outside the fandom in the form of "Yiff in Hell", indicating to publicly erotic furries that they or their sexual practices are not welcome in a given locale. As mentioned before, it frequently ventures into [[/d/|absolutely wild territory guaranteed to squick even the most hardened of internet users.]] For the most part, furries might have been tolerated had the fandom simply left it at "animal people fucking" and not become host to an array of utterly fucked up shit: watersports, adult babies, various forms of vore (most not even from natural orifices), ''actual bestiality'', and scat are all just scratching the surface.


Conventions
Of course /tg/, being /tg/, knows everyone gets off to ''something'' that would be considered fucked up by at least a significant amount of people - after all, we have to let loose somehow and not all of us are the same. Plus, there's no fetish amongst furries that isn't already expressed in plenty amongst non-furries - [[8chan]] has ''an entire fucking board'' dedicated to non-furry vore, for example, and that's not counting the fetishes ranging from bondage to guro in the 'non-furry' world [[Roman Empire|since the fucking Romans]]. Furries are simply the poster child for people who take it to completely unfathomable heights, due to the frequent overlap between furries and other /d/-tier fetishes, such that one may feel an insatiable urge to drink bleach afterward. It's not uncommon to see even other furries giving [[Chakat|the worst parts of their fandom]] a wide berth, although many onlookers [[Exterminatus|would make no distinction in that regard anyway]].
Main article: Furry convention


Furry fans prepare for a race at Midwest FurFest 2006
Some people like to joke that the influx of furries into hell drove the immortal Prince of Darkness into attempting suicide (and succeeding), and he was replaced with the [[Slaanesh|Prince of Pleasure]], because it turns out Chaos accepts pretty much anyone.
Sufficient interest and membership has enabled the creation of many furry conventions in North America and Europe. A furry convention is for the fans get together to buy and sell artwork, participate in workshops, wear costumes, and socialize.[22] The world's largest[23] furry convention, Anthrocon with more than 5,861 participants, held annually in Pittsburgh in June,[24] was estimated to have generated approximately $3 million to Pittsburgh's economy in 2008.[25] Another convention, Further Confusion, held in San Jose each January, closely follows Anthrocon in scale and attendance. US$470,000 was raised in conventions for charity from 2000–9.[26] The first known furry convention, ConFurence,[3] is no longer held; Califur has replaced it, as both conventions were based in Southern California. A University of California, Davis survey suggested that about 40% of furries had attended at least one furry convention.[9]


Websites and online communities
==You might be considered a furry (by some) if...==
The Internet contains a multitude of furry websites and online communities, such as art community websites Fur Affinity, Inkbunny, SoFurry and Weasyl; social networking sites Furry 4 Life and FurNation; and WikiFur, a collaborative furry wiki.[27] These, with the IRC networks FurNet and Anthrochat, form a key part of furry fandom. Usenet newsgroups such as alt.fan.furry and alt.lifestyle.furry, popular from the mid-1990s to 2005, have been replaced by topic-specific forums, mailing lists and LiveJournal communities.
As the only attribute consistently required to be considered a furry is an interest in anthropomorphic animals (def: having human characteristics, such as human speech, clothes, etc) you might be a furry if you identify with and/or are a devoted fan of:


There are several webcomics featuring animal characters created by or for furry fans; as such, they may be referred to as furry comics. One such comic, T.H.E. Fox, was first published on CompuServe in 1986, predating the World Wide Web by several years,[28] while another, Kevin and Kell by Bill Holbrook, has been awarded both a Web Cartoonists' Choice Award and an Ursa Major Award.[29][30]
*[[Adlet]]
*[[Beastmen]]
*[[Centaur]]
*[[Gnoll]]
*[[Lizardmen]]
*[[Minotaur]]
*[[Satyr]]
*[[Skaven]]
*Some subspecies of [[Demon]] or [[Slaanesh|some species of Daemon]]


Furry lifestylers
(Clarification: Just because you are interested in any of these does NOT force you to become a furry. It's a fandom like anime is. You can like something without associating with the ravening horde of crazy fanboys/girls.)
The phrases furry lifestyle and furry lifestyler first appeared in July 1996 on the newsgroup alt.fan.furry during an ongoing dispute within that online community. The Usenet newsgroup alt.lifestyle.furry was created to accommodate discussion beyond furry art and literature, and to resolve disputes concerning what should or should not be associated with the fandom; its members quickly adopted the term furry lifestylers, and still consider the fandom and the lifestyle to be separate social entities. They have defined and adopted an alternative meaning of the word furry specific to this group: "a person with an important emotional/spiritual connection with an animal or animals, real, fictional or symbolic."[31]


In their 2007 survey, Gerbasi et al. examined what it meant to be a furry, and proposed a taxonomy in which to categorise different "types" of furries. The largest group — 38% of those surveyed — described their interest in furry fandom predominantly as a "route to socializing with others who share common interests such as anthropomorphic art and costumes."[12] However they also identified furries who saw themselves as "other than human", and/or who desired to become more like the furry species which they identified with.[7][12]
==Things That are Not Furry==
[[Image:Furry chart.jpg|thumb|right|<s>[[Meme|100% is fine too]].</s> {{BLAM}}]]
[[Image:Cheesy.jpg|thumb|right|DANGEROUSLY CHEESY]]


Sexual aspects
Distaste for furries often backfires on /tg/ when overly zealous anons cannot find any furries to abuse and turn their attention to people involved in innocuous practices. In particular, you should check yourself if you find you are calling someone a furry for any of the following:
"Yiff" redirects here. For the film festival also known as YIFF, see Yerevan International Film Festival.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Yiff.
Homosexuality and bisexuality are overrepresented in the furry fandom,[12] by about a factor of 10 compared to the United States average self-identified rates of 1.8% bisexuality and 1.7% homosexuality.[32] According to four different surveys, 14–25% of the fandom members report homosexuality, 37–52% bisexuality, 28–51% heterosexuality, and 3–8% other forms of alternative sexual relationships.[33][9][11][34] Approximately half of the respondents reported being in a relationship, of which 76% were in a relationship with another member of furry fandom.[9] Examples of sexual aspects within furry fandom include erotic art and furry-themed cybersex.[35][36] The term "yiff" is sometimes used to indicate sexual activity or sexual material within the fandom—this applies to sexual activity and interaction within the subculture whether in the form of cybersex or offline.[37][38]


Sexual attraction to furry characters is a polarized issue within the fandom; in one survey with 4300 furry respondents, 37% answered that sexual attraction is important in their furry activities, 38% were ambivalent, and 24% answered that it has little or nothing to do with their furry activities.[34] In a different online survey, 33% of furry respondents answered that they have a "significant sexual interest in furry", another 46% stated they have a "minor sexual interest in furry", and the remaining 21% stated they have a "non-sexual interest in furry". The survey specifically avoided adult-oriented websites to prevent bias.[11] Another survey found that 96.3% of male furry respondents reported viewing furry pornography, compared to 78.3% of female; males estimated 50.9% of all furry art they view is pornographic, compared to 30.7% female. Furries have a slight preference for pornographic furry artwork over non-pornographic artwork. 17.1% of males reported that when they viewed pornography it is exclusively or near-exclusively furry pornography, and only about 5% reported that pornography was the top factor which got them into the fandom.[39]
*Playing [[Bunnies and Burrows]] (without masturbating).
*Discussing ''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness'' (without masturbating).
*Watching Disney movies and other movies with anthropomorphic characters (again, without masturbating). Disney movies may cause anthropomorphic animals to pique your interest, but does not, by default, MAKE you a furry.
*[[Monstergirls]]. Suggesting they count as furry to any stray weeaboo on /tg/ will result in them [[Eversor|broiling over with rage]].
*Playing [[gnoll]]s, [[minotaur]]s, [[Ork]]s, [[kobolds]] and in some extreme cases [[Eldar|elves]] (without masturbating).
*Discussing something such as ''Ruby Quest'' (without masturbating), which primarily has given the characters animal features in order to easily differentiate between them within its simple style.
*Discussing [[Werewolves]], playing [[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]] or [[Werewolf: The Forsaken]] (without masturbating) as, despite the frequent overlap, they are not furry by themselves.
*Playing [[Space Wolves]] (without masturbating).
*Playing [[Tyranids]] (without masturbating).
*Playing [[Beastfolk]] in general (without masturbating).
*Sexual attraction to actual, real-world animals (as in not the cute catgirl you just drew up, but your actual neighbor's cat). This is known as Bestiality, and unlike everything else on this list is ''worse'' than being a furry<ref>We're listing it here purely because the two tend to get confused</ref>, although it is also one of the aforementioned deviances that "Furry" tends to overlap with.


A portion of the fandom is sexually interested in zoophilia, although a majority take a negative stance towards the former. In a survey conducted in 1997-1998, about 2% of furry respondents stated an interest in zoophilia, and less than 1% an interest in plushophilia; the survey was replicated in 2008, and it found 17% of respondents reported zoophilia. The older lower results, which are even lower than estimated in the general population, were due to the methodology of questioning respondents face-to-face which led to social desirability bias.[33][40]
Dispute rages over what exactly constitutes furry. As a general guideline "If it has a snout, it's out" works well-enough; however (and especially on /tg/) fantasy races complicate that particular equation a bit. [[Gnoll]]s, [[Minotaur]]s, [[Beastmen]] and their ilk are a well-established part of many a RPG/Wargame setting and have been there long before the furry craze. It's important to note the difference however: Beastmen, Wulfen and the like are clearly set out in the lore as monsters-they aren't sexualised and aren't really tolerated. There's no Beastman-Human relationships in Warhammer, because the lore is quite clear on them being hated and reviled, with every interaction starting and ending at the tip of a sword.


Listen to this article (info/dl)
There are two major schools of thought on the subject. [[Skub|One holds that catgirls and other essentially near-hairless human characters with only one or two animal features]] (such as ears, minute resemblance of claws/fur on the body or a tail) [[Skub|are not furry, and the boundary of furry is only breached when you start sighting other obviously animal characteristics]] such as an altered skeletal structure, a face that resembles an actual animal and full-body-fur (this does not stop trolls from calling [[Horo]] furry, however). On the other hand, the second school of thought maintains that nobody fucking cares. There are hints of a still forming third school developing around the idea of [[Exterminatus|exterminating]] all of them and let [[Gary Gygax]] sort it out.
MENU0:00


=== Monstergirls vs. Furries ===
One will note that the above doesn't constitute a strong defense of [[Monstergirls]] as not being Furry (as, unlike the other non-furry fur-adjacent-fandoms<ref>Bestiality is not a fandom.</ref> mentioned above, the two do share a rather ''*ahem*'' one-handed approach to things). This is because, sadly, Monstergirls has some overlap with furrydom. There are a few distinctions that may be worth making between the two, though:


This audio file was created from a revision of the "Furry fandom" article dated 2006-06-08, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (Audio help)
* Monstergirls are usually an attempt to make monsters '''more''' human, usually due to a desire for something "exotic" and/or the fa/tg/uy or fa/tg/irl in question having poor luck with actual humans. Furries are frequently driven by a desire to make people '''less''' human, at least in appearance (with the target of dehumanization usually being the furry fan themselves), though the desire for the exotic still plays a similar role.
More spoken articles
* Monstergirl settings usually make a point of having humans be present. Furry works are frequently describable as "ordinary (if perhaps porny) life, but '''everybody''' is an animal".
Public perception and media coverage
* Monstergirls are, well, monsters who happen to be conventionally attractive. Most Monstergirl works make a point of discussing and showing differences in thinking (whether cultural or biological) between the Monstergirls and normal humans, with the setting itself usually being [[Setting Aesthetics#Fantasy|fantasy of some kind]]. Again, Furry works are frequently describable as "'''ordinary''' (if perhaps porny) life, but everybody is an animal".
Early portrayal of the furries in magazines such as Wired,[41] Loaded,[42] Vanity Fair,[43] and the syndicated sex column "Savage Love" focused mainly on the sexual aspect of furry fandom. Fictional portrayals of furry fandom have appeared on television shows such as ER,[44] CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,[45] The Drew Carey Show,[46] Sex2K on MTV,[47] Entourage,[48] 1000 Ways to Die,[49] Tosh.0,[50][51] and 30 Rock.[52] Most furry fans claim that these media portrayals are misconceptions,[53][54][55] while the recent coverage focuses on debunking myths and stereotypes that have come to be associated with the furry fandom.[56] A reporter attending Anthrocon 2006 noted that "despite their wild image from Vanity Fair, MTV and CSI, furry conventions aren't about kinky sex between weirdos gussied up in foxy costumes", that conference attendees were "not having sex more than the rest of us",[57] and that the furry convention was about "people talking and drawing animals and comic-book characters in sketchbooks."[37] In October 2007, a Hartford Advocate reporter attended FurFright 2007 undercover because of media restrictions. She learned that the restrictions were intended to prevent misinformation, and reported that the scandalous behavior she had expected was not evident.[58] Recent coverage of the furry fandom has been more balanced. According to Ian Wolf, a 2009 article from the BBC entitled "Who are the furries?" was the first piece of journalism to be nominated for an Ursa Major Award, the main awards given in the field of anthropomorphism.[7][59][60]
* Furry erotica has an especially bad habit of adding on '''too many weird (and/or sickening) additional fetishes'''; Monstergirl-related porn tends to be more "mass market" in their erotic goals, with a good chunk of written fiction being completely [[Monster Musume no Iru Nichijou|romance or slice-of-life oriented]] (although admittedly there are a few high-profile [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia|exceptions to this trend]]).
* Monstergirl fans seem to be an 'ordinary' (if ''also'' porn-heavy) fandom, with all the perks and pitfalls of any other. Furrydom overlaps more with being a "lifestyle", with all the bullshit that the phrase "alternative lifestyles" usually involves.
* Perhaps most importantly, sanity. Erotic Furries are well-known for blurring the line between their fantasy/fetish and reality in their minds and sometimes at their physical conventions; Monstergirl fans generally separate the two much more clearly.


Milwaukee Brewers broadcaster Jim Powell was sharing a hotel with Anthrocon 2007 attendees a day before the convention and reported a negative opinion of the furries.[61] Several downtown Pittsburgh businesses welcome furries during the event, with local business owners creating special T-shirts and drawing paw prints in chalk outside their shops to attract attendees.[62] Dr. Samuel Conway, CEO of Anthrocon, said that "For the most part, people give us curious stares, but they're good-natured curious stares. We're here to have fun, people have fun having us here, everybody wins".[63]
A close reading of some furry webcomics crying about [[#Fursecution|"fursecution"]] can be highly enlightening on several of these points, if you're of strong enough stomach to do so.  


According to Furry survey, about half of furries perceive public reaction to the fandom as negative; less than a fifth stated that the public responded to them more negatively than they did most furries.[10] Furry fans' belief that they will be portrayed as "mainly obsessed with sex" has led to mistrust of the media and social researchers.[7]
[[Skub|Whether these distinctions actually differentiate the two is left up to the reader to decide.]]


See also
==Furries on /tg/==
Animal roleplay
[[Image:Buggy_chart.jpg|400px|thumb|right|Insects are furry too.]]
Kemonomimi
Besides the usual angst over furry porn getting spammed, if furries are brought up at all, this is mostly in the context of fantasy roleplaying games that feature anthropomorphic species like Gnolls and Kobolds, etc. As mentioned above, this is a gray area where playing one of these characters does not necessarily mean one is a furry; even so, accusations can still be made, since genuine furries can use playing a canon furry species as a smokescreen for creating their [[magical realm]]. The key is to figure out ahead of time whether the player in question cares about roleplaying an adventurer and not roleplaying a sexual fetish. Actually, that's a good general rule to go by, furry or not.
Otherkin
Power animal
Therianthropy
References
Notes


Jump up ^ Staeger, Rob (July 26, 2001). "Invasion of the Furries". The Wayne Suburban. Retrieved 2009-05-20.
With regards to WH40k, there's less ambiguity. The Imperium's stance on non-humans is [[heresy|quite clear]]. Yes, [[Wulfen]] do technically straddle the line into anthro territory, but the fluff makes it clear that they're barely tolerated as it is, and the [[Inquisition]] is too busy dealing with daemonic shit to get into another fight with the [[Space Wolves]]. Yet despite all this, you do have the occasional furry try to slip something in that, by all rights, should ordinarily result in [[Exterminatus]] right from the get-go. Because of this, furries have been classified as [[Extra Heresy]]. See the [[Fur Heresy]] for one such example.
Jump up ^ Kurutz, Daveen Rae (June 17, 2006). "It's a furry weekend". Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Retrieved 2006-06-30.
^ Jump up to: a b c d Patten, Fred (2012-07-15). "Retrospective: An Illustrated Chronology of Furry Fandom, 1966–1996". Flayrah. Retrieved 2012-07-15.
Jump up ^ Patten, Fred. "The Yarf! reviews". ANTHRO. Retrieved 2007-09-24.
Jump up ^ Sandler, Kevin S. (1998). Reading the Rabbit: Explorations in Warner Bros. Animation. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. OCLC 37890394. ISBN 0-8135-2537-3, ISBN 0-8135-2538-1.
Jump up ^ "ConFurence 0". WikiFur. Retrieved 2014-09-21.
^ Jump up to: a b c d e Winterman, Denise (November 13, 2009). "Who are the furries?". BBC News Magazine. Retrieved 2009-11-29.
Jump up ^ Stamper, Chris (March 29, 1996). "Furry Muckity-Muck". The Netly News. Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2007-04-13.
^ Jump up to: a b c d e f University of California, Davis Department of Psychology (May 5, 2007). "Furry Survey Results". Retrieved 2007-05-05.
^ Jump up to: a b c d e Alex "Klisoura" Osaki. "Furry Survey". Retrieved 2008-08-08.
^ Jump up to: a b c Kyle Evans (2008). "The Furry Sociological Survey" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-09-01.
^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h i Gerbasi, Kathleen; Paolone, Nicholas; Higner, Justin; Scaletta, Laura; Bernstein, Penny; Conway, Samuel; Privitera, Adam (2008). "Furries From A to Z (Anthropomorphism to Zoomorphism)" (PDF). Society & Animals 3 (3): 197–222. doi:10.1163/156853008X323376.
Jump up ^ Riggs, Adam (2004). Critter Costuming: Making Mascots and Fabricating Fursuits. Ibexa Press.
Jump up ^ Larson, Alina (January 23, 2003). "Animal Instincts: Fans of Furry Critters Convene to Help Mankind". Tri-Valley Herald (ANG Newspapers). Retrieved 2009-05-20.
Jump up ^ "Furries Descend On Pittsburgh". KDKA-TV. June 16, 2006. Archived from the original on 2008-02-01. Retrieved 2006-06-30.
Jump up ^ Irwin, Charles; Watterson, Summer (April 24, 2002). "A 'furry' tale for a foxy college student". The Olympian. Retrieved 2008-09-03.
Jump up ^ Gaudio, Greg (August 23, 2008). "Lions and foxes and cat-dragons walk on two legs in Beach". The Virginian-Pilot. Retrieved 2008-09-07.
Jump up ^ Mitchell, Don (March 23, 1995). "From MUDs To Virtual Worlds". Social Computing Group, Microsoft. Retrieved 2009-11-06.
Jump up ^ Howells, Shelley (October 1, 2002). "Secret lives of strange and furry". The New Zealand Herald.
Jump up ^ Werner, Christian. "Och, sind die süüüüß!". Zeit Online Zuender (in German). Zeit Online. Retrieved 2008-09-06.
Jump up ^ Peralta, Eyder (May 28, 2006). "In Second Life, the World is Yours". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved 2007-08-13.
Jump up ^ KarlXydexx, Jorgensen. "What is a furry convention like?". Furry Fandom Infocenter.
Jump up ^ Editor in chief, Craig Glenday (August 7, 2007). Guinness World Records 2008. Guinness. p. 123. ISBN 1-904994-19-9.
Jump up ^ "Anthrocon website official". Anthrocon. Retrieved 2014-09-21.
Jump up ^ Brandolph, Adam (June 28, 2008). "Furry convention a $3 million cash cow for city businesses". Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Retrieved 2008-07-04.
Jump up ^ Parry, Laurence (January 17, 2010). "2009 charity donations down; $470,000 raised this decade". Flayrah. Retrieved 2010-02-02.
Jump up ^ Melissa Meinzer (2006-06-29). "Animal Passions". Pittsburgh City Paper. Retrieved 2012-04-08.
Jump up ^ The Commodore 64/128 RoundTable (1994). "Interview with Joe Ekaitis". Retrieved 2007-01-12.
Jump up ^ "2001 Winners and Nominees". Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards. 2001-02-19. Retrieved 2007-12-04.
Jump up ^ "Award Winners 2003". Ursa Major Awards. Retrieved 2007-11-09.
Jump up ^ "alt.lifestyle.furry - Frequently Asked Questions". May 8, 2001. Retrieved 2006-08-26.
Jump up ^ Gary J. Gates (2011). "How many people are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender?" (PDF). Retrieved April 23, 2015.
^ Jump up to: a b Alex Osaki (June 27, 2008). "State of the Fandom" (PDF). Furry Research Center. Retrieved March 22, 2015.
^ Jump up to: a b Gerbasi et al. (2011). "International Online Furry Survey: Winter 2011". Retrieved 2012-09-01.
Jump up ^ Bardzell, Jeffery, and Shaowen Bardzell. Sex-Interface-Aesthetics: The Docile Avatars and Embodied Pixels of Second Life BDSM. Indiana University, 2005.
Jump up ^ Stuttaford, Thomas; Godson, Suzi (December 8, 2007). "I like dressing up as a bear during sex". The Times (London). Retrieved 2007-12-11. (further details)
^ Jump up to: a b Meinzer, Melissa (June 29, 2006). "Animal Passions: The furries come to town — and our correspondent tails along". Pittsburgh City Paper. Retrieved 2007-05-25.
Jump up ^ Padva, Gilad. Dreamboys, Meatmen and Werewolves: Visualizing Erotic Identities in All-Male Comic Strips. Sexualities 8:5 (2005). 587–99
Jump up ^ Plante, C. N., Reysen, S., Roberts, S. E., & Gerbasi, K. C. (2013). International Anthropomorphic Research Project: Furry Fiesta 2013 Summary
Jump up ^ Dr. Mark Griffiths (2012-04-05). "Animal magnetism: Inside the world of the furries". Retrieved 2012-09-01.
Jump up ^ Josh Quittner (March 1994), "Johnny Manhattan Meets the Furry Muckers", Wired, People describe themselves as furry cuddly animals; more times than not, they have furry cuddly animal sex. FurryMuckers like to write long, loving, animal-sexy descriptions of themselves
Jump up ^ "Heavy Petting". Loaded magazine. March 1998.
Jump up ^ Gurley, George (March 2001). "Pleasures of the fur". Vanity Fair.
Jump up ^ "Fear of Commitment". ER. Season 7. Episode 20. 2001-03-05. NBC.
Jump up ^ "Fur and Loathing". CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Season 4. Episode 5. 2003-10-30. CBS.
Jump up ^ "Mama Told Me I Should Come". The Drew Carey Show. Season 8. Episode 6. 2002-10-21. ABC. See The Drew Carey Show on WikiFur for more information.
Jump up ^ MTV. "Sex2K Fursuit Video". Retrieved 2006-08-26.
Jump up ^ "The Day Fuckers". Entourage. Season 4. Episode 7. July 28, 2007. HBO.
Jump up ^ "Death Over Easy". 1000 Ways to Die. Season 1. Episode 4. February 8, 2009. Spike.
Jump up ^ Jordan (2011-08-10). "Tosh.O Web Redemption: The Larper". larping. Retrieved 2010-11-11.
Jump up ^ Markos (2013-09-05). "Kusa the Arctic Fox gets Web Redemption on Comedy Central’s Tosh.0". Furry News Network.
Jump up ^ "Emanuelle Goes to Dinosaur Land". 30 Rock. Season 4. Episode 21. 2010-05-13. NBC.
Jump up ^ Baldwin, Denis (August 2006). "Walk With the Animals: Local furries explain it's not about perversion, furpiles and plush". Ann Arbor Paper. Archived from the original on 2007-02-04. Retrieved 2007-02-02.
Jump up ^ Belser, Ann (June 18, 2006). "All about 'furry fandom' at confab". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved 2006-06-30.
Jump up ^ "We're at it like rabbits". The Sun. 3 April 2007. Retrieved 2007-04-11.
Jump up ^ Togneri, Chris (July 6, 2007). "Furries purr over Pittsburgh reception". Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Retrieved 2007-07-14.
Jump up ^ Meinzer, Melissa (February 2, 2006). "Fur Ball In The Works". Pittsburgh City Paper. Retrieved 2007-05-25.
Jump up ^ Abel, Jennifer (November 1, 2007). "Hell Hath No Furries". Hartford Advocate (Advocate Weekly Newspapers). Retrieved 2010-06-19.
Jump up ^ "Award Winners 2009". Ursa Major Awards. May 3, 2010. Retrieved June 25, 2010.
Jump up ^ TheChainedWolf (2010-03-14). "Ursa Major Awards 2009: predictions and forlorn hopes". FurteanTimes.com/Flayrah. Retrieved 2010-11-11.
Jump up ^ "The Brewers Meet the Furries". Deadspin. July 6, 2007. Retrieved 2007-06-07.
Jump up ^ Parry, Laurence (July 17, 2007). "Anthrocon 2007 draws thousands to Pittsburgh for furry weekend". Wikinews. Retrieved 2009-11-06.
Jump up ^ "Furry Convention Creates Wild Scene In Pittsburgh". WPXI News. June 26, 2008. Retrieved 2008-07-04.
Further reading


Ferreday, Debra. "Becoming deer: Nonhuman drag and online utopias." Feminist Theory 12.2 (2011): 219-225.
===Flare===
Hilton, Craig. "Furry Fandom — An Insider's View from the Outside", parts 1 & 2. South Fur Lands #2 & #3, 1995, 1996.
Originally introduced to /tg/ by some creepy furfag that would spam her picture in [[drawfag]] threads constantly, Flare was since kidnapped from her creator to receive an extreme makeover in the hands of /tg/: Her backstory is that, hated by absolutely everyone, she had to endure constant abuse and fighting ever since childhood, turning her into a sociopathic fuckup. Posting an image of old Flare with or without text used to be the easiest form of trolling on all of /tg/ (Not even [[4e]] [[D&D]] could have elicited as much blind rage from the board) but the new Flare has since cut the worst edge out of it. More importantly, what /tg/ did to her is bugging the shit out of the original Flarefag, which is awesome.
Martin, Watts. Mange: the need for criticism in furrydom 1994, 1998 (Archive.org mirror)
 
Morgan, Matt. Creature Comfort: Anthropomorphism, Sexuality and Revitalization in the Furry Fandom. Diss. Mississippi State University, 2008.
There is no art of her anywhere except the original image and the ones that drawfags have made. Trolls sometimes refer to Flare as a mascot of /tg/, but this is so unthinkably wrong and horrifying that you are advised to stop thinking about the possibility {{BLAM|before we make you.}}
Probyn-Rapsey, Fiona. "Furries and the Limits of Species Identity Disorder: A Response to Gerbasi et al." Society and Animals 19.3 (2011): 294-301.
 
===Chakat===
Like Flare, this is an imported concept that /tg/ rapidly grew to hate. The short story is that [[Chakat]]s are a race of hermaphroditic furry [[catfolk]] [[centaur]]s [[Mary Sue|who are super amazing at everything and everyone wants to fuck them]], and engage in [[FATAL|metric fucktons of sexual fetishes including incest]]. And if you're not sexually attracted to them, then you're a horrible person and [[rape|they'll ''make'' you love them]]. In short, they're everything stereotypically wrong with furries in one package. Originally a [[Star Trek]] fanfic race, they've since attempted to [[Chakats Meet the Hammer of the Emperor|invade]] every other sci-fi franchise, despite being hated even by other furries. So if one of your players attempts to play a Chakat character, you'll know what to expect. On the other hand, with a few tweaks, they'd make for a great villain...
 
Also, their inventor is now a [[My Little Pony|brony]]. Make of that what you will.
 
===Sparkledogs===
The original form of the [[Freakshit]] meme, "sparkledog" is a pejorative from the 90s/early 2000s against furries who try to make their furry characters more distinct and end up making them at best silly-looking and at worst uberspecial snowflakes. There are three distinct methods of making a sparkledog:
 
# Give the character an unnatural and often lurid color scheme; [[edgelord]]s favored black and red, whilst others favored brighter, more technicolor colors, often in combinations. This is the source of the term "sparkledog".
# Make the character a halfbreed or even a multigenerational mixture of different races. This can be as innocuous as something technically in the same family, like a lion/tiger or a fox/wolf, to something completely defying biology, like a literal bull(cow)/shark or tiger/shark, a wolf/raven, or a scorpion/cobra. Some of these hybrids even caught on enough to make their own niche fandoms within the furry fandom, such as cabbits (half cat, half rabbit) and laquines (rabbit/horse, usually depicted as hyper-horny bunny [[dickgirl]]s with big ol' horse weiners).
# Make the character a mythical creature crossbreed, which ironically is often regarded as worse than just straight up being a mythical creature. The [[Half-Dragon]] was a popular choice, but [[Half-Fiend]]s (especially [[succubus]]) and [[Dhampir]]s were also big.
 
Note that these methods can and often do overlap - method 2 is often an in-universe justification for giving a sparkledog character its unusual coat. A good example of this is ZigZag; an in-universe porn star and a major furry sex icon of the 90s who was half-skunk and half-Siberian tiger, basically resulting in a skunk with black-and-white tiger stripe pattern fur.
 
===The Furry Test===
If you are developing a character or race, or are looking at someone else’s, and are wondering if they are technically furry or not, take this simple test. Just go through the list of traits and add the indicated points for each one that applies.
 
Note: a lot of these traits are also synonymous with [[Mary Sue|Mary Sues]] and indeed the two have a tendency to occur together, as the worst furries tend to make their creations blatant and shameless Mary Sues in addition to their other [[heresy|depravities]].
 
*Add 3 if they resemble an anthropomorphic animal.
*Add 4 if they are ''specifically'' an anthropomorphic animal (fox, wolf, etc.).
*Add 4 if they are a Sonic fan character.
*Add 5 if they are a [[My Little Pony]] fan character.
*Add 2 if their sexual characteristics are gone into with ''significant'' detail (E.g., things that [[Slaanesh]] would find amazing)
*Add 1 if they have a vibrant and unnatural coloration (often a lazy attempt at [[Original character, do not steal]]).
**If the unnatural coloration is [[Edgy|red-and-black and the artist is older than 12]], max out their score then introduce their head to the nearest heavy object at maximum velocity.
*Add 2 if they are the subject of fetish material.
*Add 3 if they are are the subject of fetish material in-universe.
*Add 2 if they are always depicted on the side of good.
*Add 5 if Humans are the real monsters.
** If it's done particularly ham-fistedly (E.g.: [[Avatar]], [[World of Darkness|Changing Breeds]], [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/TheConversionBureauTheChatoverse Chatoyance's "The Conversion Bureau" series]), add 5 more at minimum.
*Add 6 if they are [[Chakat|overly perfect, physically and/or morally]].
*Add 5 if their nonhuman traits grants them any powers, although subtract 1-3 from that if they have corresponding weaknesses (e.g.: a strong sense of smell '''sucks''' when you have to go into a sewer, spikes that tend to get in the way of being intimate, fangs that make eating a hassle and keep cutting the inside of your mouth...)
 
Now add up your final score.
* Anything over 10 is likely furry, though exceptions exist.
* Anything over 20 is firmly in "you sick bastard" territory. Your synthetic abominations will be converted into cybernetic slaves of the Auric Bara'ki empire, or else age backwards into their infancy and be mind-wiped. You, on the other hand, will be wired into a [[Penitent Engine]] to atone for your sins, '''you sick bastard'''.
* Anything over 30 is indescribably fucked up, and requires a [[Inquisition|counseling session with an Inquisitor, with cattle prod and leash]].
 
=="Fursecution"==
If you've read this far then you've seen several references to "thin-skinned furries complaining of 'fursecution'". The problem is that, like with any largely hated group of people, such persecution does indeed exist (stop laughing), and the net is often widened to include 'sane' furries (e.g. simple fans of the [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FunnyAnimal "Funny Animal"] style), who may be nonsexual and might potentially share that disdain for their more depraved "brethren". Furries who ''do'' have the pertinent fetish but lack any ''other'' fetishes will show where they draw the line; hell, the overtly sexual of the sexual ones generally have their limits. In the cases where someone manages to check off most or (somehow) all of the more objectively despicable traits on the list, there's a point where the a constant stream of rage wouldn't do much good, since people tend to be less receptive of your opinions when you're a complete dick about them. But then, we don't come to 4chan to make healthy life choices, do we?
 
Another complication is that humans ''are'' like other animals in at least one notable way: we tend to act the way we're treated. Thus if you consistently act like an asshole to someone, they'll often eventually act like an asshole back. In this way, furries play into the common narrative where the insecure and/or arrogant vocal minorities within a larger group of people (e.g. the aformentioned LBTGQ+ community) get so annoying in their bitching about persecution (be it 'imaginary' or otherwise), that they "enable" ''actual'' persecution against the ''whole'' group. By that token, recognizing that furries are too easy a target - and usually scapegoated for ''other'' reasons - is not mutually exclusive of the fact that more than quite a few of them legitimately deserve the shit they get.
 
It should be noted that there has been targeted violence against furries, including [https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/chlorine-gas-sickens-19-at-furries-convention-1.2863783 a fucking Gas Attack on a Furry Convention in 2014]. This is obviously not okay in the slightest, and whoever did the heinous deed should be shunned for thinking their targets being furry was an excuse to try and kill fellow human beings. There's a line that shouldn't be crossed in driving back the Furry, and this did a triple-backflip over it.
 
== Some positive advice ==
So you have probably read this far and been wondering, "If you are a furry, how would the people on this site actually want you to act, besides dying?" Well, everyone is different, and other people have different levels of 'fur-tolerance' based on how far their Hive World is to Holy Terra. No strategy for avoiding getting hunted is perfect, but here is a survival-guide for how to be a furry in places like this:
 
===Don't involve kids or real animals===
This should be self-explanatory; if you have any fetishes relating to the two WE DO NOT want to hear about it and recommend you stop and seek professional help for everyone's sake (including yours) ASAP. If you do mention it outside of that context or the designated Discord server for your fetish, do not be surprised if you are booted out of the site/board and possibly have the feds sicced onto you, because nobody who has any semblance of a moral compass would tolerate involving those two categories in NSFW shit.
 
===Be chill. Seriously, always be chill===
[[File:The Furries reaction to FURRY APOCALYPSE.jpg|thumb|This is some Furries reaction to a Furry Genocide Animation. So much for being a perpetually triggered community.]]
One of the most frequent positive things you'll hear from normal people with furry friends is how "chill" they are. That exact word keeps coming up. How do you do this? Don't get upset if you can help it. If your friend shows you something anti-furry as a joke, even if you don't like it, claim that you found it funny. People will often slowly start to find you more tolerable if you are tolerable of them!
 
(Or, in simple terms: Don't be the top page image whenever someone says they don't like furry stuff.)
 
===Don't have too many fucked-up fetishes===
Having a furry fetish is a given regarding this, (asexual furries do exist, though) but if you like anything like scat, or gore, or [[Chakat|anything gross like that]], '''keep it to yourself'''. 99% of people here don't want to hear about that shit. You want to share that stuff with someone? Go to the dedicated Discord server or fetish site and share it there (if it crosses certain lines, like animals or kids in the point above, see the first point for what to do).
 
===If you are an artist, or writer, take criticism===
Many Furries are artists, and nobody is gonna take your work seriously if you don't let them try and help you improve it. Unhelpful criticism does exist and you're almost certain to get some assholes who just want to bash on you, but the real critics are the ones trying to help you by pointing out flaws and suggesting ways of correcting them. Even if you don't agree with their advice, you should take it respectfully and actually consider what they are saying, and how it can affect what you are making.  
 
Speaking of which, here's a few bits of advice for writing:
*Please don't make the Furry species in your story ze Übermensch (in the [[Mary Sue]] sense of the word, not the Nietzschean one.) This is a good general principle for writers as a whole, but many terrible Furry-written stories heavily feature this kind of "[[Chakats|Muh super-special OC race is the best and perfect in all things!]]" bullshit, so there's going to be even less slack cut than usual.
*Try and make sure your Furry species has traits beyond "Is Sexy," "Is morally perfect," and the like. A boring or one-note species only makes the negative traits stand out even more, which is exacerbated even further by the tendency of bad Furry authors to get so wrapped up in masturbating over how sexy/moral/perfect their creations are that they forget to make them ''actually interesting''. That, in turn, leads into the above issue of slack not being cut because people are Done With this Shit<sup>'''TM'''</sup> and don't want to slog through pages of authorial masturbation over how great their creation is.
*Leading on from the above: be judicious with sexualisation. Unless it's porn or smutty romance, spending multiple paragraphs prattling on about how sexy your Furry creation is will probably turn off casual readers, particularly if you suddenly segue into it from an entirely unrelated subject. This goes double for those with more overtly fucked-up fetishes, as excessive sexualisation only makes these look even worse to the average reader.
*If humans are bastards or the real monsters in your story, try and handle it delicately. Give it some nuance, rather than making every human (bar one or two token "good" characters) into one-dimensional, moustache-twirling caricatures straight out of terribly written [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|HFY wank-fics]]. Similar to the first point, a lot of badly-written Furry works heavy-handedly portray humanity as incorrigibly evil bastards, so poor handling risks people dropping it due to the association.
 
===Don't be obsessive about it===
This is technically a continuation of point 2, but this deserves clarification: you can have it be a part of your life, you can have it be a significant part of your life, but DO NOT let it become your entire life. Have other hobbies and make friends outside your own direct interests to gain some interesting new perspectives. Some furries think of the community as an entire lifestyle unto itself. THIS IS NOT HEALTHY. Don't think like this. Furries can be a lot of things, but being one should not become your entire existence online (or IRL, for that matter).
 
===Respect the fandom and the lore===
This is related to points 2 & 5 and it basically means that you should not try to shoehorn your fetish/OC/fanfiction where it does not belong. If you play a game, work within the bounds of its universe. If the 'verse has anthros or beastmen - fine, go ahead and play your OC/Fursona/whatever. If it does not, either drop it or come up with a damn good reason why they should be included.  
 
40k has a good example with the Felinids - they are a poorly described feline-like species of abhumans that you can theoretically have as Furry [[Your Dudes]] (Imperial Guard), but if you are going to have them as an IG army, make them grounded in the setting (i.e.: more meat for the grinder of the IoM's wars, not some uber-sexualised [[Mary Sue]] regiment). If you're still stuck on this point: [[Fur Heresy]] is a great example of what NOT to do when inserting your Furry characters into a setting.
 
This advice should help your overall acceptance/begrudging tolerance in websites like this. Your mileage may vary, terms and conditions apply, see store for details. There are many reasonable examples on why people here would/do hate furries, and although most would never admit it, a good half of this community would probably be interested in something that undeniably falls under the 'Furry Media' category - if the creator had a brain in his head, put effort into writing, made interesting artwork, and didn't take themselves too seriously.
 
The Furry fandom and furries have seen a greater degree of acceptance by the larger internet and IRL community and YOU are in a position to improve upon this. Watch, listen, respect, and be better.
 
== Furry politics ==
Contrary to popular belief, furries are not a monolithic block when it comes to a lot of things, just as their fetishes are varied, so too is their ideological bent.
 
The subculture can trace it's origins to 1980s American nerd/geek culture so a lot of the original (and current) members are imbibed with distinctly American brand of politics. It took until 90s however for distinct brands to start emerging. The most notable would either be right-of-center libertarians or left-of-center milquetoast socialists. The fandom at this time was too busy getting shit for being furries in order to really care about politics much (ancient administratum net-records indicate 'Skunkfucker' as being a popular name at that time).
 
This all changed when Al Qaeda attacked on 11-09-2001. which acted as a catalyst for larger polarization within American society and thus furries who at this time were still predominantly based in USA.  An upsurge in patriotism, nationalism/jingoism, and the beginnings of racism started to show gradually. Flash forward to the New 10s and you start to get some furries that are pretty righty and lefty.
 
The political makeup of the Furry Fandom as of the New 10s/New20s is majorly left-leaning and consistent with modern liberals - economically conservative and socially liberal with some who are far-left. A vast majority is also supportive of the LGBTQ and other minority and/or marginalized groups. A minority however hold a distinctly right-wing views and some can be said to be related to or part of the Alt-Right phenomenon that arose in the late 10s.  Long story short - the majority of furries are various flavors of leftists with all that entails while a minority is various flavors of right-wing with all THAT entails.
 
Okay, you can stop laughing. Firstly, Nazifurs (aka Furzis) are furries who support Nazism. Yes, they do exist and yes, they are just as terrible as you imagine. The movement started much earlier but gained popularity in the late 2010s. They are still a minority within a minority for now, thankfully. There are also Soviet Furs on the opposite side, but like the Nazifurs nobody gives a shit about what they have to say. The rest are either Libertarians (of the ˝privatize everything and let the Invisible Hand sort it out˝ brand), SJWs, hardcore socialists/communists and anarchists. The fandom has done a relatively decent job of keeping it's nuts down and out though so there's that.
 
==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:Animalabuse.jpg|Why any sane person should hate furries.
Image:Geek-hierarchy-pic15.jpg|Furry [[LARP]]ers.
Image:Dnd.jpg|Furcadia, an infamous furry graphical MUD.
Image:Exterminatus.jpg|This is what /tg/ actually believes.
Image:DeathToTheFurries.jpg|[[/b/|/b/rothers]] do not like any more than [[/tg/|fa/tg/uys]] do.
Image:SuiseisororitasHQ.JPG
Image:Get_furry_out_of_here.jpg
Image:Anonymarines_vs_furries.jpg
Image:One_wing_troll_dragon.jpg|Flare before
Image:True Flare.jpg|Flare after
Image:Flarebanned.jpg|No mods on /tg/, you say?
Image:Flaresprons_anonib.jpg
Image:RatAssMacro.png
File:Space_wolves_sergeant_by_GordonFreeguy.png|Not sure if heresy...
File:Art.png
File:Animated_yiff_furry_marines_1211613516571.gif|HERESY IN THE EXTREME
File:5_years_later_still_ruining_by_flyingdebris-d488kxr.jpg|Five years later - the war is still going strong.
File:M_does_not_approve.jpg|[[/m/]] supports /tg/ in its quest against the Fur-Tide.
File:Gnoll.jpg|Another awesome fantasy race is consumed by the fur-tide.
File:Dr. Steinman Parody.png|That's what happens when you <del>do drugs</del> draw furry porn for years. It screws up your mind.
File:Making chaos cultists look sane.jpeg|Congrats, fuckwit, you just made Khornate Guardsmen look reasonable
File:Dragons on a car 1.jpg|thumb|left|Example of an erotic scalie fantasy.
File:4D235B9F-5AA2-4AEA-BA31-8743729C6AC0.png
Image:D&d_beasts__senmurv_gay_pride.jpg|A suspiciously furry D&D creature. <ref>For the record: That's a "Simurgh", actual real life [[Mythology|mythological]] bird...only the artist has somehow made it 500,000 times more furry, LGBT-pridey, and just plain stupid looking for some reason.</ref>
File:Furworm.jpg|The [[Monstergirls]] Anon needs to learn to be careful what he says...
</gallery>
 
== See Also ==
 
* [[Albedo]] - A hard sci-fi furry setting that manages to earn /tg/'s grudging respect by being both old school and surprisingly well thought out.
* [[Beastmen]] - When furries become violent [[Chaos]] worshipers.
* [[Space Wolves]] - When furries become violent [[Emperor]] Worshipers.
* [[Confrontation]]
* [[Dreamkeepers]] - One of the few, if not, the only good Furry webcomics the Warp has to offer.
* [[Fur Heresy]]
* ''[[Furry Pirates]]''
* ''[[Ironclaw|Iron Claw]]''
* [[Sonic the Hedgehog]] - The [[Shortstack]] side of the fandom, especially after the Adventure and Advance games came out.
* [[Chakat]], something most furries prefer, understandably, to not be associated with.
** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEmh5a_wSyw | Slaaneshi furries nearly destroy the world, but an unsung hero named Viktor stops them]
* [[Sergal]], like Chakats, a homebrewed race that is still based on humanoid animals (in this case a sort of wolf/shark/lizard mix).
* [[Protogen]], a race of furry alien cyborgs who rival sergals in popularity.  I don't know why we even have a page for them though.
* [[Centaur]]s, although people argue if they are furries or [[monstergirl]]s.
* [[Minotaur]]s, which like centaurs get claimed by both sides.
* [[Catfolk]], who despite being furries are somehow more /tg/-acceptable than [[catgirl]]s.
* [[Lupin]]s, an actual D&D race of anthro wolves who went from Renaissance French swashbucklers in [[Red Steel]] to pseudo-Native American werewolf hunters who ride around on giant wolves.
* [[Ratfolk]], another race marginalized for "official furriness!"
* [[Gnolls]], anthro hyenas who mostly manage to avoid the furry connections
* [[Lizardfolk]], because some furries prefer scales.
* [[Dragonborn]], who really appeal to furries, though some furries complain that they don't have tails.
* [[Kobold]]s, an anthro lizard race who manage to be popular on /tg/ despite being anthro.
* [[FAPP]], a furry tabletop game for <s>furfags</s> players who enjoy exploring the most perverse of [[Magical Realm]]s.
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrJVZZLv2GE In which] [[Black Templars|The Emperor's finest]] do what they can to save us from the utter [[heresy]] that is furries. AVENGE ME, BROTHER!
* [[Harkness Test]]
* [[Humblewood]], a fan created setting for [[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition]] where half of the playable races are different kinds of bird people and the other half are various other animal people.
* [[Digganobz|Diggas]] - A Warhammer 40,000 in-universe sub-faction, basically members of Non-Ork races that want to be [[Orks]], which's [[Awesome|understandable]].
 
==Footnotes==
 
[[Category:Furry]]
[[Category:Not related]]
[[Category:RAGE]]

Latest revision as of 08:53, 21 June 2023

This article contains PROMOTIONS! Don't say we didn't warn you.
Fig. a: This furry is not making any friends here.

"I have run with the tigers and I know wild beasts better than the priests. Animals are neither gods nor fiends, but men in their way without the lust and greed of man."

– Kull, Exile of Atlantis

If you're looking for actual /tg/ races that are based on the principle of "humanoid animal", see Beastfolk.

Alternatively, if you’re looking for the Chaos God from which furries emanate, see Slaanesh.

A Furry (not to be confused with fury, which they tend to create) are people who are (often obsessive) fans of anthropomorphic animals. Some furries are merely keen on Disney, the Rats of NIMH, My Little Pony, or Usagi Yojimbo (these are the tolerable ones); at the other end of the spectrum lie the Otherkin, people who genuinely believe that they are animals or dragons trapped inside human bodies. Some furries make and wear fursuits in an attempt to resemble their avatars in real life, which tends to make the participants look ridiculous most of the time unless the costume is well made (which, credit where credit is due, happens extraordinarily often) or they're at a con full of them (and even then...).

The Furry community is ostensibly based mostly in meritocratic elitism, with good drawfags in the upper levels of their social pyramid and the average Disney/Warner Brothers' animation fanboy in the lowest. Drama, misanthropy and other emo behaviors are very common in the hierarchy, often representing humankind as sociopathic or genocidal in their literary works or comics. Many furry comics have a homosexual or bisexual theme, not unlike anime; while there are many LGBTQ+ individuals and supporters in the furry community, there are also many "safe havens" that are host to furries often overlap with those accepting of gay communities. For what it's worth, the non-furry parts of those communities only consider them a problem when they go bashit fucking crazy.

The diverse constituencies of the furry community in a nutshell.

Furries get a lot of hate in a lot of places on the internet, which stems form several sources; a big one is the really insecure subtype of furry who posts their "fursona" on deviantART and proceeds to spew bile at anyone who doesn't kiss their ass about it. Another big part of it is the type of furry most commonly referred to by /tg/ and 4chan, which is the erotic furry, also known as the "furvert", which is a specific sexual fetish for anthropomorphic animals. Erotic furries are fond of cybersex, which they refer to as "yiffing", supposedly for the sound a fox makes while copulating. There are fewer erotic furries in the furry community than the average fa/tg/uy believes, but also more of them than the average furry will admit to(The number cited is often around 66% of furries are in some way there for the sex). While sexual attraction to anthropomorphic animals *by itself* isn't too deviant or disturbing, the problem is that like many fetishes it has an odd tendency to occur in conjunction with other, more extreme ones (more on that in a bit). Because of these various factors, this type of furry is considered by 4chan, out of all possible factions, as the vilest and most nauseating form of heresy in all of existence, with only the ultimate Banhammer as the solution. Even to the point where *all* forms of furry porn are banned on /d/, a board that accepts pretty much everything else, even outright felonies like rape.

Antipathy toward furries on /tg/ and 4chan runs high principally due to a profound weariness with thin-skinned furries complaining of "fursecution" (but the irony that this has partially legitimized their claims has not gone wholly unnoticed). If you are a furry and feel the need to talk about it, the best way to survive on /tg/ is to admit from the outset that you are a sick bastard and that you don't expect anyone to praise you for it. (Addendum: Since 40k has very little to do with the fandom, it's generally safe to just not refer to yourself as one, lest ye call down the collective nerd rage of the fa/tg/uys on you, as shown in fig. a.) Furry threads make for very effective trolling experience, especially if erotic furry art is involved.

/tg/ bitches about anthropomorphic animals all the time in sci-fi and fantasy settings, yet they have a insatiable fetish for cat women in skimpy armor. The irony is real.

In a somewhat ironic twist, /tg/'s burning hatred for furries is what allowed /tg/ to come into being; Warhammer Wednesday was created as a direct response to furries attempting to spam /b/ every day of the week. The popularity of this day caught Moot's attention, leading to the creation of the /tg/ board.

Furries have their own RPGs, most notably Ironclaw, and its Asian themed companion book Jadeclaw, as well as Furry Pirates and Albedo.

/tg/, /v/, /x/ and other boards (not really /b/, because half of them are furfags anyways) have a profound hatred for all things furry and will rage, sage, kill, maim and ultimately burn the thread into the desolate wastelands of 404. (Any thread you may happen to see featuring monstergirls, centaurs, gnolls, or other sexualized sapient creatures is merely a figment of your imagination.)

Note: some furfags like to take it to the extreme and have recently tried to take /tg/ for themselves, only to have to resort to copious amounts of samefagging after the majority of fa/tg/uys got bored of saging their threads into oblivion. It is also theorized that furfags that invade /tg/ usually come from the bottomless pit of horror called tgchan.

Scalies are anthropomorphic creatures of the reptile and amphibian variety. As furries are nicknamed such for their humanoid shape covered in fur, scalies tend to have a coating of scales much like the animals they represent. However, some scalies, including draconids, have very light or no true scales, but flesh more like a human's.

Scalies are also furry fans with a preference for lizard, reptile, dragon and dinosaur characters and themes. It is also a self-moniker for the users of alt.fan.dragons, a Usenet discussion group for all things drakōn. They are not to be confused with dragonborn (because they don't ask to be fucked and raped constantly).


The real question is are birds scalies or furries? Maybe beakies? *BLAM*

Yiffing[edit]

A 'typical' furry /d/M in action.

Yiffing refers to sex between furries, and is most commonly used outside the fandom in the form of "Yiff in Hell", indicating to publicly erotic furries that they or their sexual practices are not welcome in a given locale. As mentioned before, it frequently ventures into absolutely wild territory guaranteed to squick even the most hardened of internet users. For the most part, furries might have been tolerated had the fandom simply left it at "animal people fucking" and not become host to an array of utterly fucked up shit: watersports, adult babies, various forms of vore (most not even from natural orifices), actual bestiality, and scat are all just scratching the surface.

Of course /tg/, being /tg/, knows everyone gets off to something that would be considered fucked up by at least a significant amount of people - after all, we have to let loose somehow and not all of us are the same. Plus, there's no fetish amongst furries that isn't already expressed in plenty amongst non-furries - 8chan has an entire fucking board dedicated to non-furry vore, for example, and that's not counting the fetishes ranging from bondage to guro in the 'non-furry' world since the fucking Romans. Furries are simply the poster child for people who take it to completely unfathomable heights, due to the frequent overlap between furries and other /d/-tier fetishes, such that one may feel an insatiable urge to drink bleach afterward. It's not uncommon to see even other furries giving the worst parts of their fandom a wide berth, although many onlookers would make no distinction in that regard anyway.

Some people like to joke that the influx of furries into hell drove the immortal Prince of Darkness into attempting suicide (and succeeding), and he was replaced with the Prince of Pleasure, because it turns out Chaos accepts pretty much anyone.

You might be considered a furry (by some) if...[edit]

As the only attribute consistently required to be considered a furry is an interest in anthropomorphic animals (def: having human characteristics, such as human speech, clothes, etc) you might be a furry if you identify with and/or are a devoted fan of:

(Clarification: Just because you are interested in any of these does NOT force you to become a furry. It's a fandom like anime is. You can like something without associating with the ravening horde of crazy fanboys/girls.)

Things That are Not Furry[edit]

100% is fine too. *BLAM*
DANGEROUSLY CHEESY

Distaste for furries often backfires on /tg/ when overly zealous anons cannot find any furries to abuse and turn their attention to people involved in innocuous practices. In particular, you should check yourself if you find you are calling someone a furry for any of the following:

  • Playing Bunnies and Burrows (without masturbating).
  • Discussing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness (without masturbating).
  • Watching Disney movies and other movies with anthropomorphic characters (again, without masturbating). Disney movies may cause anthropomorphic animals to pique your interest, but does not, by default, MAKE you a furry.
  • Monstergirls. Suggesting they count as furry to any stray weeaboo on /tg/ will result in them broiling over with rage.
  • Playing gnolls, minotaurs, Orks, kobolds and in some extreme cases elves (without masturbating).
  • Discussing something such as Ruby Quest (without masturbating), which primarily has given the characters animal features in order to easily differentiate between them within its simple style.
  • Discussing Werewolves, playing Werewolf: The Apocalypse or Werewolf: The Forsaken (without masturbating) as, despite the frequent overlap, they are not furry by themselves.
  • Playing Space Wolves (without masturbating).
  • Playing Tyranids (without masturbating).
  • Playing Beastfolk in general (without masturbating).
  • Sexual attraction to actual, real-world animals (as in not the cute catgirl you just drew up, but your actual neighbor's cat). This is known as Bestiality, and unlike everything else on this list is worse than being a furry[1], although it is also one of the aforementioned deviances that "Furry" tends to overlap with.

Dispute rages over what exactly constitutes furry. As a general guideline "If it has a snout, it's out" works well-enough; however (and especially on /tg/) fantasy races complicate that particular equation a bit. Gnolls, Minotaurs, Beastmen and their ilk are a well-established part of many a RPG/Wargame setting and have been there long before the furry craze. It's important to note the difference however: Beastmen, Wulfen and the like are clearly set out in the lore as monsters-they aren't sexualised and aren't really tolerated. There's no Beastman-Human relationships in Warhammer, because the lore is quite clear on them being hated and reviled, with every interaction starting and ending at the tip of a sword.

There are two major schools of thought on the subject. One holds that catgirls and other essentially near-hairless human characters with only one or two animal features (such as ears, minute resemblance of claws/fur on the body or a tail) are not furry, and the boundary of furry is only breached when you start sighting other obviously animal characteristics such as an altered skeletal structure, a face that resembles an actual animal and full-body-fur (this does not stop trolls from calling Horo furry, however). On the other hand, the second school of thought maintains that nobody fucking cares. There are hints of a still forming third school developing around the idea of exterminating all of them and let Gary Gygax sort it out.

Monstergirls vs. Furries[edit]

One will note that the above doesn't constitute a strong defense of Monstergirls as not being Furry (as, unlike the other non-furry fur-adjacent-fandoms[2] mentioned above, the two do share a rather *ahem* one-handed approach to things). This is because, sadly, Monstergirls has some overlap with furrydom. There are a few distinctions that may be worth making between the two, though:

  • Monstergirls are usually an attempt to make monsters more human, usually due to a desire for something "exotic" and/or the fa/tg/uy or fa/tg/irl in question having poor luck with actual humans. Furries are frequently driven by a desire to make people less human, at least in appearance (with the target of dehumanization usually being the furry fan themselves), though the desire for the exotic still plays a similar role.
  • Monstergirl settings usually make a point of having humans be present. Furry works are frequently describable as "ordinary (if perhaps porny) life, but everybody is an animal".
  • Monstergirls are, well, monsters who happen to be conventionally attractive. Most Monstergirl works make a point of discussing and showing differences in thinking (whether cultural or biological) between the Monstergirls and normal humans, with the setting itself usually being fantasy of some kind. Again, Furry works are frequently describable as "ordinary (if perhaps porny) life, but everybody is an animal".
  • Furry erotica has an especially bad habit of adding on too many weird (and/or sickening) additional fetishes; Monstergirl-related porn tends to be more "mass market" in their erotic goals, with a good chunk of written fiction being completely romance or slice-of-life oriented (although admittedly there are a few high-profile exceptions to this trend).
  • Monstergirl fans seem to be an 'ordinary' (if also porn-heavy) fandom, with all the perks and pitfalls of any other. Furrydom overlaps more with being a "lifestyle", with all the bullshit that the phrase "alternative lifestyles" usually involves.
  • Perhaps most importantly, sanity. Erotic Furries are well-known for blurring the line between their fantasy/fetish and reality in their minds and sometimes at their physical conventions; Monstergirl fans generally separate the two much more clearly.

A close reading of some furry webcomics crying about "fursecution" can be highly enlightening on several of these points, if you're of strong enough stomach to do so.

Whether these distinctions actually differentiate the two is left up to the reader to decide.

Furries on /tg/[edit]

Insects are furry too.

Besides the usual angst over furry porn getting spammed, if furries are brought up at all, this is mostly in the context of fantasy roleplaying games that feature anthropomorphic species like Gnolls and Kobolds, etc. As mentioned above, this is a gray area where playing one of these characters does not necessarily mean one is a furry; even so, accusations can still be made, since genuine furries can use playing a canon furry species as a smokescreen for creating their magical realm. The key is to figure out ahead of time whether the player in question cares about roleplaying an adventurer and not roleplaying a sexual fetish. Actually, that's a good general rule to go by, furry or not.

With regards to WH40k, there's less ambiguity. The Imperium's stance on non-humans is quite clear. Yes, Wulfen do technically straddle the line into anthro territory, but the fluff makes it clear that they're barely tolerated as it is, and the Inquisition is too busy dealing with daemonic shit to get into another fight with the Space Wolves. Yet despite all this, you do have the occasional furry try to slip something in that, by all rights, should ordinarily result in Exterminatus right from the get-go. Because of this, furries have been classified as Extra Heresy. See the Fur Heresy for one such example.

Flare[edit]

Originally introduced to /tg/ by some creepy furfag that would spam her picture in drawfag threads constantly, Flare was since kidnapped from her creator to receive an extreme makeover in the hands of /tg/: Her backstory is that, hated by absolutely everyone, she had to endure constant abuse and fighting ever since childhood, turning her into a sociopathic fuckup. Posting an image of old Flare with or without text used to be the easiest form of trolling on all of /tg/ (Not even 4e D&D could have elicited as much blind rage from the board) but the new Flare has since cut the worst edge out of it. More importantly, what /tg/ did to her is bugging the shit out of the original Flarefag, which is awesome.

There is no art of her anywhere except the original image and the ones that drawfags have made. Trolls sometimes refer to Flare as a mascot of /tg/, but this is so unthinkably wrong and horrifying that you are advised to stop thinking about the possibility before we make you.

Chakat[edit]

Like Flare, this is an imported concept that /tg/ rapidly grew to hate. The short story is that Chakats are a race of hermaphroditic furry catfolk centaurs who are super amazing at everything and everyone wants to fuck them, and engage in metric fucktons of sexual fetishes including incest. And if you're not sexually attracted to them, then you're a horrible person and they'll make you love them. In short, they're everything stereotypically wrong with furries in one package. Originally a Star Trek fanfic race, they've since attempted to invade every other sci-fi franchise, despite being hated even by other furries. So if one of your players attempts to play a Chakat character, you'll know what to expect. On the other hand, with a few tweaks, they'd make for a great villain...

Also, their inventor is now a brony. Make of that what you will.

Sparkledogs[edit]

The original form of the Freakshit meme, "sparkledog" is a pejorative from the 90s/early 2000s against furries who try to make their furry characters more distinct and end up making them at best silly-looking and at worst uberspecial snowflakes. There are three distinct methods of making a sparkledog:

  1. Give the character an unnatural and often lurid color scheme; edgelords favored black and red, whilst others favored brighter, more technicolor colors, often in combinations. This is the source of the term "sparkledog".
  2. Make the character a halfbreed or even a multigenerational mixture of different races. This can be as innocuous as something technically in the same family, like a lion/tiger or a fox/wolf, to something completely defying biology, like a literal bull(cow)/shark or tiger/shark, a wolf/raven, or a scorpion/cobra. Some of these hybrids even caught on enough to make their own niche fandoms within the furry fandom, such as cabbits (half cat, half rabbit) and laquines (rabbit/horse, usually depicted as hyper-horny bunny dickgirls with big ol' horse weiners).
  3. Make the character a mythical creature crossbreed, which ironically is often regarded as worse than just straight up being a mythical creature. The Half-Dragon was a popular choice, but Half-Fiends (especially succubus) and Dhampirs were also big.

Note that these methods can and often do overlap - method 2 is often an in-universe justification for giving a sparkledog character its unusual coat. A good example of this is ZigZag; an in-universe porn star and a major furry sex icon of the 90s who was half-skunk and half-Siberian tiger, basically resulting in a skunk with black-and-white tiger stripe pattern fur.

The Furry Test[edit]

If you are developing a character or race, or are looking at someone else’s, and are wondering if they are technically furry or not, take this simple test. Just go through the list of traits and add the indicated points for each one that applies.

Note: a lot of these traits are also synonymous with Mary Sues and indeed the two have a tendency to occur together, as the worst furries tend to make their creations blatant and shameless Mary Sues in addition to their other depravities.

  • Add 3 if they resemble an anthropomorphic animal.
  • Add 4 if they are specifically an anthropomorphic animal (fox, wolf, etc.).
  • Add 4 if they are a Sonic fan character.
  • Add 5 if they are a My Little Pony fan character.
  • Add 2 if their sexual characteristics are gone into with significant detail (E.g., things that Slaanesh would find amazing)
  • Add 1 if they have a vibrant and unnatural coloration (often a lazy attempt at Original character, do not steal).
  • Add 2 if they are the subject of fetish material.
  • Add 3 if they are are the subject of fetish material in-universe.
  • Add 2 if they are always depicted on the side of good.
  • Add 5 if Humans are the real monsters.
  • Add 6 if they are overly perfect, physically and/or morally.
  • Add 5 if their nonhuman traits grants them any powers, although subtract 1-3 from that if they have corresponding weaknesses (e.g.: a strong sense of smell sucks when you have to go into a sewer, spikes that tend to get in the way of being intimate, fangs that make eating a hassle and keep cutting the inside of your mouth...)

Now add up your final score.

  • Anything over 10 is likely furry, though exceptions exist.
  • Anything over 20 is firmly in "you sick bastard" territory. Your synthetic abominations will be converted into cybernetic slaves of the Auric Bara'ki empire, or else age backwards into their infancy and be mind-wiped. You, on the other hand, will be wired into a Penitent Engine to atone for your sins, you sick bastard.
  • Anything over 30 is indescribably fucked up, and requires a counseling session with an Inquisitor, with cattle prod and leash.

"Fursecution"[edit]

If you've read this far then you've seen several references to "thin-skinned furries complaining of 'fursecution'". The problem is that, like with any largely hated group of people, such persecution does indeed exist (stop laughing), and the net is often widened to include 'sane' furries (e.g. simple fans of the "Funny Animal" style), who may be nonsexual and might potentially share that disdain for their more depraved "brethren". Furries who do have the pertinent fetish but lack any other fetishes will show where they draw the line; hell, the overtly sexual of the sexual ones generally have their limits. In the cases where someone manages to check off most or (somehow) all of the more objectively despicable traits on the list, there's a point where the a constant stream of rage wouldn't do much good, since people tend to be less receptive of your opinions when you're a complete dick about them. But then, we don't come to 4chan to make healthy life choices, do we?

Another complication is that humans are like other animals in at least one notable way: we tend to act the way we're treated. Thus if you consistently act like an asshole to someone, they'll often eventually act like an asshole back. In this way, furries play into the common narrative where the insecure and/or arrogant vocal minorities within a larger group of people (e.g. the aformentioned LBTGQ+ community) get so annoying in their bitching about persecution (be it 'imaginary' or otherwise), that they "enable" actual persecution against the whole group. By that token, recognizing that furries are too easy a target - and usually scapegoated for other reasons - is not mutually exclusive of the fact that more than quite a few of them legitimately deserve the shit they get.

It should be noted that there has been targeted violence against furries, including a fucking Gas Attack on a Furry Convention in 2014. This is obviously not okay in the slightest, and whoever did the heinous deed should be shunned for thinking their targets being furry was an excuse to try and kill fellow human beings. There's a line that shouldn't be crossed in driving back the Furry, and this did a triple-backflip over it.

Some positive advice[edit]

So you have probably read this far and been wondering, "If you are a furry, how would the people on this site actually want you to act, besides dying?" Well, everyone is different, and other people have different levels of 'fur-tolerance' based on how far their Hive World is to Holy Terra. No strategy for avoiding getting hunted is perfect, but here is a survival-guide for how to be a furry in places like this:

Don't involve kids or real animals[edit]

This should be self-explanatory; if you have any fetishes relating to the two WE DO NOT want to hear about it and recommend you stop and seek professional help for everyone's sake (including yours) ASAP. If you do mention it outside of that context or the designated Discord server for your fetish, do not be surprised if you are booted out of the site/board and possibly have the feds sicced onto you, because nobody who has any semblance of a moral compass would tolerate involving those two categories in NSFW shit.

Be chill. Seriously, always be chill[edit]

This is some Furries reaction to a Furry Genocide Animation. So much for being a perpetually triggered community.

One of the most frequent positive things you'll hear from normal people with furry friends is how "chill" they are. That exact word keeps coming up. How do you do this? Don't get upset if you can help it. If your friend shows you something anti-furry as a joke, even if you don't like it, claim that you found it funny. People will often slowly start to find you more tolerable if you are tolerable of them!

(Or, in simple terms: Don't be the top page image whenever someone says they don't like furry stuff.)

Don't have too many fucked-up fetishes[edit]

Having a furry fetish is a given regarding this, (asexual furries do exist, though) but if you like anything like scat, or gore, or anything gross like that, keep it to yourself. 99% of people here don't want to hear about that shit. You want to share that stuff with someone? Go to the dedicated Discord server or fetish site and share it there (if it crosses certain lines, like animals or kids in the point above, see the first point for what to do).

If you are an artist, or writer, take criticism[edit]

Many Furries are artists, and nobody is gonna take your work seriously if you don't let them try and help you improve it. Unhelpful criticism does exist and you're almost certain to get some assholes who just want to bash on you, but the real critics are the ones trying to help you by pointing out flaws and suggesting ways of correcting them. Even if you don't agree with their advice, you should take it respectfully and actually consider what they are saying, and how it can affect what you are making.

Speaking of which, here's a few bits of advice for writing:

  • Please don't make the Furry species in your story ze Übermensch (in the Mary Sue sense of the word, not the Nietzschean one.) This is a good general principle for writers as a whole, but many terrible Furry-written stories heavily feature this kind of "Muh super-special OC race is the best and perfect in all things!" bullshit, so there's going to be even less slack cut than usual.
  • Try and make sure your Furry species has traits beyond "Is Sexy," "Is morally perfect," and the like. A boring or one-note species only makes the negative traits stand out even more, which is exacerbated even further by the tendency of bad Furry authors to get so wrapped up in masturbating over how sexy/moral/perfect their creations are that they forget to make them actually interesting. That, in turn, leads into the above issue of slack not being cut because people are Done With this ShitTM and don't want to slog through pages of authorial masturbation over how great their creation is.
  • Leading on from the above: be judicious with sexualisation. Unless it's porn or smutty romance, spending multiple paragraphs prattling on about how sexy your Furry creation is will probably turn off casual readers, particularly if you suddenly segue into it from an entirely unrelated subject. This goes double for those with more overtly fucked-up fetishes, as excessive sexualisation only makes these look even worse to the average reader.
  • If humans are bastards or the real monsters in your story, try and handle it delicately. Give it some nuance, rather than making every human (bar one or two token "good" characters) into one-dimensional, moustache-twirling caricatures straight out of terribly written HFY wank-fics. Similar to the first point, a lot of badly-written Furry works heavy-handedly portray humanity as incorrigibly evil bastards, so poor handling risks people dropping it due to the association.

Don't be obsessive about it[edit]

This is technically a continuation of point 2, but this deserves clarification: you can have it be a part of your life, you can have it be a significant part of your life, but DO NOT let it become your entire life. Have other hobbies and make friends outside your own direct interests to gain some interesting new perspectives. Some furries think of the community as an entire lifestyle unto itself. THIS IS NOT HEALTHY. Don't think like this. Furries can be a lot of things, but being one should not become your entire existence online (or IRL, for that matter).

Respect the fandom and the lore[edit]

This is related to points 2 & 5 and it basically means that you should not try to shoehorn your fetish/OC/fanfiction where it does not belong. If you play a game, work within the bounds of its universe. If the 'verse has anthros or beastmen - fine, go ahead and play your OC/Fursona/whatever. If it does not, either drop it or come up with a damn good reason why they should be included.

40k has a good example with the Felinids - they are a poorly described feline-like species of abhumans that you can theoretically have as Furry Your Dudes (Imperial Guard), but if you are going to have them as an IG army, make them grounded in the setting (i.e.: more meat for the grinder of the IoM's wars, not some uber-sexualised Mary Sue regiment). If you're still stuck on this point: Fur Heresy is a great example of what NOT to do when inserting your Furry characters into a setting.

This advice should help your overall acceptance/begrudging tolerance in websites like this. Your mileage may vary, terms and conditions apply, see store for details. There are many reasonable examples on why people here would/do hate furries, and although most would never admit it, a good half of this community would probably be interested in something that undeniably falls under the 'Furry Media' category - if the creator had a brain in his head, put effort into writing, made interesting artwork, and didn't take themselves too seriously.

The Furry fandom and furries have seen a greater degree of acceptance by the larger internet and IRL community and YOU are in a position to improve upon this. Watch, listen, respect, and be better.

Furry politics[edit]

Contrary to popular belief, furries are not a monolithic block when it comes to a lot of things, just as their fetishes are varied, so too is their ideological bent.

The subculture can trace it's origins to 1980s American nerd/geek culture so a lot of the original (and current) members are imbibed with distinctly American brand of politics. It took until 90s however for distinct brands to start emerging. The most notable would either be right-of-center libertarians or left-of-center milquetoast socialists. The fandom at this time was too busy getting shit for being furries in order to really care about politics much (ancient administratum net-records indicate 'Skunkfucker' as being a popular name at that time).

This all changed when Al Qaeda attacked on 11-09-2001. which acted as a catalyst for larger polarization within American society and thus furries who at this time were still predominantly based in USA. An upsurge in patriotism, nationalism/jingoism, and the beginnings of racism started to show gradually. Flash forward to the New 10s and you start to get some furries that are pretty righty and lefty.

The political makeup of the Furry Fandom as of the New 10s/New20s is majorly left-leaning and consistent with modern liberals - economically conservative and socially liberal with some who are far-left. A vast majority is also supportive of the LGBTQ and other minority and/or marginalized groups. A minority however hold a distinctly right-wing views and some can be said to be related to or part of the Alt-Right phenomenon that arose in the late 10s. Long story short - the majority of furries are various flavors of leftists with all that entails while a minority is various flavors of right-wing with all THAT entails.

Okay, you can stop laughing. Firstly, Nazifurs (aka Furzis) are furries who support Nazism. Yes, they do exist and yes, they are just as terrible as you imagine. The movement started much earlier but gained popularity in the late 2010s. They are still a minority within a minority for now, thankfully. There are also Soviet Furs on the opposite side, but like the Nazifurs nobody gives a shit about what they have to say. The rest are either Libertarians (of the ˝privatize everything and let the Invisible Hand sort it out˝ brand), SJWs, hardcore socialists/communists and anarchists. The fandom has done a relatively decent job of keeping it's nuts down and out though so there's that.

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Footnotes[edit]

  1. We're listing it here purely because the two tend to get confused
  2. Bestiality is not a fandom.
  3. For the record: That's a "Simurgh", actual real life mythological bird...only the artist has somehow made it 500,000 times more furry, LGBT-pridey, and just plain stupid looking for some reason.