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EVERYTHING is furry, wtf?!

Pages:1 41
20Report
at 19 Mar 2008: 11:16

There was no 'retroing' the term.  From the very beginning of Furry Fandom, which had its roots in the 70's, the term was coined to refer to anything anthropomorphic in nature, in part because it was simpler to say than 'anthropomorphic', in part because it was more accurate than 'funny animal' (not all Furry material was humorous, as exemplified by Usagi Yojimbo or Albedo), and also in part to differentiate from simpler, child-oriented fare.  Generally, Furry refers to slightly more adult anthropomorphic material; not necessarily meaning, but certainly including, sexual material.

Even so, it was used, even right from the beginning, to refer to anything that was anthropomorphic in nature, whether it was Mickey Mouse or Andrew Swan's novels, or ancient animal-based god mythology.

It eventually also came to mean those who enjoyed and appreciated such works.

I think where it ultimately deviated from the original intentions was when it was stretched to include what became known as 'furry lifestyle', which was a completely different matter altogether, and became the source for several years of divisive bickering.

That 'furry' had any connection with any outright sexual connotations, such as somehow being all about fursuit sex (as an example) is something that was imposed from outside, as a result of misunderstandings caused by magazines articles that misunderstood the phenomenon from the get-go, and from shows like CSI that deliberately misrepresented the fandom for the sake of a story.

Trying to say NOW that furry doesn't include anything that is of its own nature animal-anthropomorphic is the true retroaction -- an act of desperate denial.

21Report
at 19 Mar 2008: 15:54

>>20 (Just an addendum not an arguement against ;p)

The "burned fur" movement attempted to makea new catagory to that end - "burned" fur, referring to people who wanted to be known as the pre-lifestyler era furries but that movement degenerated into infighting to because as we all know, Drama is super effective Vs furries of both types.

It'd still be nice if there was some differentiation (Fuzzy instead of furry... or "non lifestyler" furry.), if only because it's annoying having someone else ruining my reputation with their antics; I'm perfectly good at ruining my own reputation kthnxbye.

22Report
at 19 Mar 2008: 16:48

>>21

It was tried.  The word 'Antrho' was offered as a term to differentiate from 'Furry', as the latter was thought to have been corrupted as a term, but some individuals didn't want, and didn't believe there should be, any differentation, and so either ignored 'Anthro' or blended the two together ('Anthrofurry'), thereby keeping the tensions and confusion in play.

23Report
LLz at 19 Mar 2008: 20:08

(Based on >>14)
I just differenciate between 5 types:
1) Lifestyle/Belief
2) Artist
3) Consumer/Purveyor
4) Works
5) (not really furry) Specific style/character/work fan

I think this is the easiest way to properly segregate the different classifications to limit confusion

24Report
at 19 Mar 2008: 22:44

In some ways Furry has suffered a similar but opposite phenomena as Roleplay games.

These days any game with a role is considered an RPG - Oblivion is an RPG because you can make a character... nevermind it plays like a first person game (albeit with numbers), or Final Fantasy being a "J-RPG" or World of Warcraft being a "MMO-RPG", when in fact none of those "RPG" titles have anything to do with roleplaying.

If playing a character makes it a roleplay game, then Donkey Kong was a roleplay; you played the role of a fat italian plumber bent on saving his damsel from the gorilla... thing.

In much the same way, furry now gets used to cover everything involving anthropomorphic animals, the only problem is whereas RPG is synomous with sex (Well, maybe not but everyone likes to say they play RPGs), being furry is a bad thing not good.

25Report
Some Random Cheetah at 19 Mar 2008: 23:06

>>24

i've got to agree with you there, the term furry has been overused and broadened to what it means far too much, people just throw it around carelessly and people forget what it really means.

also i should point out the differentiality of furry and yiffy, furry more commonly reffering to the "clean" sects of the fandom while yiff(y) reffers oppositely to anything sexual, or even the act of sex.

>>1 all in all this comes down to the interpretation of the people seeing your work, not the community, simple as that.

26Report
at 20 Mar 2008: 14:09

I try so hard not to hate furries but then they start talking about how the world is furry and it makes me want to actually fursecute their ass IRL but then I remember those are just the loud ignorant outspoken minority and realize I don't hate furries, I just hate morons.

27Report
at 20 Mar 2008: 15:10

>>26 LOL at you for not wanting to hear their reasons and not trying to counter-reason, just skipping ahead to the hating.

28Report
at 20 Mar 2008: 15:46

>>27
LOL at all the points have already been made and furries have chosen to disregard the elements that destroy their argument that the world is furry.

29Report
at 21 Mar 2008: 11:40

I don't remember anyone arguing that the -world- was furry...

30Report
at 21 Mar 2008: 14:26

>>29
read
>>7
"Oy vey, listen up: the world is furry."

31Report
at 21 Mar 2008: 14:50

>>1 "The only thing furries created is FURRY PORN."
The only thing Japanese Otaku created is hentai.
The only thing American Anime fans create are cosplay costumes.
The only thing Trekkies/Trekkers created is fan-fiction.
The only thing sports fans create is noise.

Every fandom associates themselves with something created before or outside of their fandom (e.g. Japanese cartoons, StarWars). Every fandom claims ownership of something produced by major corporations (e.g. the way sports fans say "we won" even though they don't play on the team and had absolutely no influence on the game's outcome). And most fandoms produce porn (e.g. Anime hentai, StarTrek slash-fiction).

32Report
at 21 Mar 2008: 17:13

>>30

Okay.  One guy said it.  One guy is everybody?

33Report
at 21 Mar 2008: 17:38

>>32
It's also been brought up in countless other threads with multiple statements expressing the world is furry. It was even recently mentioned in a furry news story about how they let some protestors inside when it was raining and they had no umbrella's. The guy said "everyone is a furry, if you've ever talked to your pet and thought they cared then you are a furry"

Point is it's a common viewpoint among furries that the world is furry.

34Report
at 21 Mar 2008: 18:32

The world is Weeaboo.

35Report
LLz at 21 Mar 2008: 20:57

And well, everyone's insane. Not that it matters.

36Report
at 21 Mar 2008: 23:25

>>33

Hm.  Okay.  Maybe they do have a point, I guess.

37Report
at 21 Mar 2008: 23:28

>>36
Hey, I don't know -- those statements sound pretty general to me, and not so literal.  And maybe they're the wrong kind of furry, you know?  Like lifestylers or something.

38Report
at 22 Mar 2008: 01:50

Thing is nobody has a 100% for sure defintion of furry. Go to any 50-100 websites with a 'What is furry' section in it, and... Wow look. No two explanations are the same. I dont have a correct answer, and neither do any of you.

39Report
at 22 Mar 2008: 04:00

Meh - furry is just a lable, and lables are just concise discriptors handy for organising the world for easy refference. They all mean different things to different people, some more variable than others.

They don't define you unless you let them, and I always get a laugh at people who get upset over such trivialities.

40Report
at 22 Mar 2008: 08:01

Why are people trying to redefine "furry"?

I don't see anime fanatics trying to redefine "anime" to be focused on cosplay. I don't see yaoi fans arguing with lolicon fans over which are the true anime fans. And I don't see anime fans arguing over whether or not cartoons produced by big companies should be called "anime".

If anime fans can be happy to let their word refer vaguely to their genre, why can't furry fans also just leave their word alone and just let it refer to the genre as described by >>15 and >>20?

41Report
at 22 Mar 2008: 08:29

>>40
"I still insist that furry is what we make it"
"Trying to say NOW that furry doesn't include anything that is of its own nature animal-anthropomorphic is the true retroaction -- an act of desperate denial."

See, that's part of the problem right there. These definitions are trying to go past the scope of what the original definition of furry was meant to include. It was NOT meant to include ANIMALS that talk, it was meant to include anthromorphs, that's fucking it. It wasn't meant to cover mythological creatures or anything that wasn't an anthromorph.

No one can be happy until you furries stop trying to hijack unrelated material.

42Report
at 22 Mar 2008: 09:56

>>41

No, it -was- intended to include talking animals.  WATERSHIP DOWN was one of the prime examples given at the time when Furry was first coming together.

43Report
at 22 Mar 2008: 09:58

Aren't talking animals anthropomorphic by definition?  They talk like men and have human personalities.  Sounds like anthropomorphising to me.

44Report
at 22 Mar 2008: 10:10

>>41
Sounds like denial to me.  How do you know what was meant and what wasn't anyway?

45Report
at 22 Mar 2008: 10:13

>>40

Eh.  People have been redefining Furry since the very beginning.  Either it didn't include something they thought should be included, or it included something they thought didn't belong.  It's kinda like the US Constitution; it gets amended ever so often.

46Report
at 22 Mar 2008: 10:35

Some of you really need to look up the definition of anthromorphic.

47Report
at 22 Mar 2008: 11:21

>>46

Okay.  I went to ask.oxford.com and I got this:

"attributing human form or feelings to a god, animal, or object. 2 having human characteristics."

48Report
at 23 Mar 2008: 20:24

Watership Down is a prime example of anthropomorphism. The rabbits therein have a fairly sophisticated culture and some capacity for reason. Of course real rabbits don't, but it made for a very compelling story, and it could be imagined to exist without completely undoing the kind of lives real life rabbits experience.

Zoomorphism is the other side of the coin, the one we more frequently pass among ourselves, though we still tend to call it "anthro". We're dealing with characters are essentially people, not animals. They exist in cultures that are based on human cultures, they walk, talk and act like people with cartoon animal heads and tails and hides, and their animal identities are usually reflected in their personalities. They're ciphers for different kinds of people and would actually be people, except we find the animal mask more appealing and it liberates the character for more fanciful storytelling.

The mythological characters have to be considered on a case-by-case basis. I'm not an Egyptologist but I doubt the ancient Egyptians thought of Anubis the way we do. However the image of Anubis looks very zoomorphic and inspires the imaginations of the furry-minded. Most results have been pretty good.

49Report
at 23 Mar 2008: 20:42

Checking ask.oxford.com again, and for zoomorphic we get...

"having or representing animal forms or gods of animal form."

...which pretty much seems to be exactly the same thing as anthropomorphic.

Different word, same meaning.

50Report
at 23 Mar 2008: 21:25

I know no one's going to care, but:
anthropomorphic=attributing human characteristics to (whatever)
zoomorphic=attributing animal characteristics to (whatever)
naming your car "Mustang" is zoomorphic
naming your cat "Mary" is anthropomorphic
kapish?

51Report
at 23 Mar 2008: 21:27

>>50 Naming something anything = naming. What you call something has nothing to do with it being "furry" or not.

52Report
at 23 Mar 2008: 22:35

>>51 someone doesn't get it at all, or refuses to.
That was just differentiating between the two terms aside from any of it being considered furry.

53Report
at 24 Mar 2008: 01:24

...you say tomato...

54Report
at 24 Mar 2008: 04:09

Sort of like the "gay" thing... anything girly/fruity/etc somehow gets considered gay even though gay has come to mean "homosexual". In fact, one has to take the status of "metro" in order to escape being labeled "gay" without being considered sexual towards the same sex. Luckily I'm "gay" in most definitions, but what about the people who aren't?

Same with furry, but with even MORE confusion with the term. We can't even agree in our own minds, much less with other people, on a solid definition for "furry". (sexual/non-sexual, what styles, what hobbies, etc)

Technically I guess you can be furry without being A furry, or just having an attraction for anthropomorphic animals without choosing your persona to be one.

55Report
at 24 Mar 2008: 07:08

>>54
If the balls touch...

56Report
LLz at 24 Mar 2008: 16:45

>>55
Well, it's fustrating when one is bi but keeps getting labelled gay.

57Report
AnonIhmus at 24 Mar 2008: 16:59

>>1
Who cares, dude? Quit whining about being called furry. It's not like its an insult.. It's just a fucking name used to describe people who are into the same thing. Im sick of people making "furry" out to be a big fucking deal when it isnt.

It's a fucking fandom and anything else that comes with it doesn't matter. Outside opinions DONT MATTER and if you have a problem with being labeled a furry- stop doing things that make people label you one. Draw mostly furry art? Guess what? Youre a fucking furry. Not because you "fuck dogs", not because you jack off to inflation or macro or gazelle women- but because you draw the art.

Simple. As. That.

58Report
AnonIhmus at 24 Mar 2008: 17:03

>>56
Shouldn't be. The only person your sexuality should matter to are -you- and whoever you're interested in/with. It's just a label anyway, and it means nothing on its own. So what if someone gets it wrong?
Just correct them once. If they still want to call you gay when you're not it just means they're stupid- ignore them and move on.

59Report
LLz at 24 Mar 2008: 17:22

>>57
Actually, that might be the problem. Many people consider "furry" to be an insult (in the "I'm delusional" manner), just as many people consider "gay" to be an insult. There's enough negative connotations for it to be considered such, even if said connotations are usually baseless.

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