this is why i deserve to have my fingers broken and never write again.

Hi loyal reader! This is why i havent been posting much lately. Trying to write my term paper has been making me homicidal, and i can barely survive what a spiraling cesspool of shit it is. Starts out okay, quickly turns into a disgusting discussion of fursecution at the end. Kill me now.

Cultural Subgroup Investigation: The furry episode
Aiden Fiddler                                                                                                                                                                                            Period 3 The internet
When I was a little kid, my favorite film was The Lion King. I watched it over and over again, fascinated by the animation, the sheer breadth of time over which such an epic tale took place, the full-symphony orchestral musical numbers. And the characters, something about the lions in particular got to me. I found them just as believable as any human character, and twice as interesting.  Children often play pretend, and while I often would often play at being a character from a fairy tale, in my favorite games of pretend I was a lion. Prowling the Savannah with my family, we would go on countless adventures. But as with any child, my fantasies of grandeur were soon replaced with the reality of school, and forgotten about for a time.
 A few years later, I remembered the film I was obsessed with as a young child when I came upon a website dedicated to displaying art by fans of The Lion King. Most of the drawings were mediocre at best, but a few truly good artists did post on the site. Many of the pictures were of characters I didn’t know going on adventures that weren’t in the movies. A pale brown lion with a black streak in her fur was depicted many times in many different situations including hunting gazelle, climbing Pride Rock, and grooming a friend. Through a little digging, I discovered that she was an original creation of the artist, used to represent her as if she were an animal, to be a sort of alternate animal persona, or as the artist referred to it, a “fursona”. As I soon discovered, a majority of the characters displayed were the fursonas of some artist or another. Unknowingly, I had stumbled upon an internet lair of a group known as furries, a people who express themselves through anthropomorphic animal avatars. My knowledge of their society and customs would be limited for many years to come, but this interaction stuck with me, later causing a great deal of curiosity, prompting a cultural study of what sets these people apart in their interactions both online and in real life.
To find out about more about furry subuculture for this investigation, I employed many research tactics, including an in-depth study of emic works, better defined as those produced by members of the culture in question about their cultural experiences. I searched through hundreds of artworks, planned interviews to conduct with furries from a wide demographic, and attended multiple live podcast sessions, observing and interacting in the corresponding chat room while looking for common themes. I created a blog posting my musings and findings about furry culture, thus allowing any interested to create an honest dialogue with me, pointing out any misconceptions. As there are those in any subgroup on the internet whose sole interest is to post explicit material, I tended to conduct my searches with content blockers on moderate. I don’t expect this to interfere with my ability to gather accurate information on the furry subculture as these people tend to make up an extremely vocal minority.
Early in my research, I became curious about what draws furries to certain species for the totemic representation known as a fursona. In my research, I have learned that there are many reasons why furs choose to identify with the species they do. Some choose to identify with species that are powerful and feared, and some consider this to be a representation of a desire for control in their lives. They often chose a totem that accentuates either a desired trait they find themselves to be lacking, or something they are particularly proud of themselves for. Some go with species they find to be aesthetically pleasing, and often create imaginative hybrids with unusual colorations. Others, as I discovered when perusing through emic texts (those produced by members of the culture), take on the practice of a more spiritual totemic identification.  It should come as no surprise that people in today’s culture are interested in spiritual identification with animals. In the past, humans of all cultures used zoomorphic characteristics in their spiritual practices, some donning the skins of animals, some telling tales of animal characters learning moral lessons through trickster tales, or even transposing biblical tales with anthropomorphic characters taking important roles on, as per The Chronicles of Narnia. With so much of expressed spirituality coalescing around this idea, it makes sense that some would still find moral and religious guidance through the actions of animals. This form of “animal spirituality” (Carges, 2010) belongs to an overlapping but slightly different practice known as theiranthropy, coming from the roots therio, meaning animal, and anthropo meaning human. Therianthropy differs from the practices of the furry fandom in that furry is a culture on the internet built around self-expression through an animal avatar and therianthropy is a spiritual experience based on the concept that one is not entirely human, either having been reincarnated from an animal, or otherwise carrying an animal spirit in their body.
While conducting this research, I found myself finding more and more in common with the furry fandom. I have always been fascinated with anthropomorphic creatures, alternate forms of self expression, and interacting with people from around the globe from all walks of life. This honestly made my research quite a bit more difficult. I had a hard time thinking of things I wanted to know about furries the more I realized I had in common with them. What is there that the average person doesn’t understand about furries? I had to ask myself. The answer it turns out, is why somebody would want to be a furry. What do furries get out of their self-identification, if anything? (Shroeder 2011) The answer is, at least in my opinion, a fairly simple one. In our society, people are expected to grow up all too fast. It is natural for people to hang on to their childhood interests, and allow these interest to develop alongside themselves.
Imagine for instance the high school varsity quarterback. The best days of his life are spent on the football field. No matter how enjoyable the rest of his life may be, he will always look back on big games and talking with the cheerleaders with a great deal of fondness. Upon reaching the age where his body is no longer able to play football like in the ‘glory days’, he may either take up a new interest, grow into a deep depression over the loss of ability to participate in his past favorite activities, or immerse himself in nostalgic reminders of days gone by while continuing to develop healthy ways of expressing his interest. He may have old high school buddies over to watch the game on Sunday, or he may join a fantasy football league. It is not entirely uncommon for him to walk around wearing a football jersey emblazoned with the name of his favorite player and team.
Likewise, for many furries, childhood is looked back upon with longing. It’s natural for one to long for the days of simplistic social interaction and the safety of cuddly, friendly, anthropomorphic animal characters. Upon reaching puberty, many of her friends will reject the reminders of their past, and will trade the cartoons of yesterday for new interests like school dances and boy bands. That’s not to say however that the furry denies all oncoming signs of adulthood, she merely incorporates her childhood interests into her teenage and then adult life. While she used to watch Winnie the Pooh, she now draws characters of her own creation on adventures suited to her current experiences in life, and shares them with her likeminded friends. She may make friends on the internet who share her interests, thus allowing herself greater opportunity for self expression. And, much like the ex-football star, she may wear outfits that denote her ongoing interest in a pasttime of her youth. Such outfits may include teeshirts with animal characters on them, handmade animal tails and ears in the species of her choice, and in some cases, a fursuit.
A fursuit is exactly what it sounds like. It's a suit made of fur. Well, more accurately, a fursuit is what many furries wear to show the outside world the their identification wit htheir fursona. What a fursuit looks like is a football mascot costume, but with greater detail and a less terrifying face. It's a highly coveted status symbol by many furries, as getting a fursuit can be incredibly expensive due to the labor intensive process involved with making one. To see just what making a fursuit entailed, I looked at the webpages of several famous fursuit designers, including Beastcub, Matrices, and One fur all studios. While these names may not mean anything to the average american, amongst the furry fandom, they are revered as master craftspeople capable of designing and creating complex creations that most others could only dream of. While my personal sewing skills mean it takes me a weekend's concentrated effort to sew by hand a lopsided wolf's tail out of faux fur, these artizens manage to create entire costumes with articulating jaw joints, resin eyes, and pleather pawpads. For obvious reasons, the furry community is at large fascinated with the works of these fursuit designers. A while back, before beginning my reasearch, I was required to wear a mascot costume for my volunteer position, I was told that my efforts would be best put to use were i to wear a dinosaur costume and interact with small children, bringing a smile to their faces. I was excited to get to put on the costume, but apprehensive once I saw that it was essentially a poorly put together football mascot with large snarling teeth. However, once I climbed into the body and had assistance with putting the head into place, I felt like an entirely different person. I felt the urge to dance around and make kids smile, and even found myself waving exaggeratedly and acting giddy towards my coworkers in the breakroom. If wearing a poorly made costume for a character I had no identification with could be so fun, I understand what it is that drives many furries to desire owning a fursuit designed to look like their own fursona. It must be an incredibly freeing experience to walk around in an outfit that makes them instantaneously anonymous and famous. It drives complete strangers to interact with you in an entirely different way. Without the human face staring back at them, people truly seem to interact in a different way towards you. Some were cruel, pulling on the tail and trying to unzip the costume, but they were few and far between. Much more common was the mesmerized look of a child on the face of a teenager or adult. Spontaneous behavior seemed to be prompted by this cartoon character come to life. I got hugged so hard I thought I might not be able to breathe, flirted with by teenagers trying to figure out if I was a boy or a girl, and swept into a surprise polka by a middle aged man. Wearing a fursuit is for many, removes the masks they have to wear in their daily lives and allows them to express themselves more freely, and at the same time allows strangers to interact with them in a more genuine manner to who they truly are.
However, not all furries are interested in fursuits, and a somewhat vocal minority seems opposed to the use of fursuits in general. THis may be in part becuase of the public stigma associated with fursuit wearers and by proxy furries in general that is at times perpetuated by the media. Furries are often either portrayed as socially reperessed freaks at best, or costume fetishists and practicioners of bestiality at worst. Examples of this stigma in the media include the CSI: Los Vegas episode commonly discussed in the fandom, Fur and Loathing in Los Vegas. This episode takes place at a fictional furry convention in LA, where dectectives enter the scene to try and solve the murder of one fursuiter known in the community as "Rocky Raccoon". Upon entering the convention, more than seventy percent of the conventioners are wearing fursuits, which should be an immediate clue that this is not an entirely factual representatiion as only x% of furries actually own fursuits, with x% showing interest in owning one were they to have the money. The furries are shown as cultlike, wandering around aimlessly, a glazed over look in the eyes of the few not wearing costumes. CITE. With such a large amount of time spent on percieved negatives of the fandom and little done to redeem it in the eyes of viewers, it's not surprising that many furs reject fursuiters in general for fear of being connected to the image portrayed in CSI.