Do you remember when and what helped you discover your affinity for furries? If you do, I’d like to hear your stories!
To get the ball rolling I’ll start with mine. While I certainly can’t pinpoint the exact date I became fixated on anthros, I can absolutely remember getting Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast when I was 7 or 8 (2000ish).
Seeing Tails was all I needed to get hooked, and want to be a cool fox like him. I didn’t even have a word for it until I started using the internet years later, but my furry fate was sealed from then onward. It was the catalyst that got me into fantasizing about having fur and a big tail, and got me doodling lots of Sonic art as a kid. While I’ve long since stopped making Sonic art, Tails still holds a special place in my heart over 20 years later.
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I was 10 or so when my ADHD decided I was going to hyperfixate on centaurs, and in my wanderings through the pre-dotcom-bust internet it didn’t take long to find that the fantasy-novel-cover type images were already being outnumbered by the furry ones on vcl. Then I discovered Chakats and fell straight into the fandom. XD
Thanks for sharing! From the sounds of it you’ve been aware for a long time too, honestly it’s kinda amazing to me how long it’s been a part of many people’s lives and identities. It really is one of those things that seem to stick with you forever!
Honestly, no idea. I’ve felt connected to animals longer than I could remember, and have been developing characters since longer than I could remember. I remember writing a story about an animal character when I was 8.
I think in the end, it’s always been part of me. I likely found animals to be a safe space, felt drawn toward them, and it went from there.
For me, there were several separate threads that all came together at one point.
In middle school, I was envious of my friends’ artistic abilities and I resolved to get better at drawing. This was during the heyday of DeviantArt and so I made an account and followed my friends. Traversing through people’s profiles and what they liked, just randomly surfing, I discovered the work of Melissa O’Brien (“Frisket17”) and I fell in love with their entire oeuvre.
Then I realized why I was so in love with her work specifically: for the first time, I saw depictions that closely resembled the world that I had built in my head – a sort of sunny, tropical spinoff of Redwall. And then I was like, oh my god, it’s not just me! I’m not the only one who wants to see this sort of thing. I wanted The Lion King but in a city. I wanted the beach episode of Redwall. I finally had a word for it: I wanted furry. And it turns out I could draw these characters, too – I could flesh out my own world AND get better at art. Win!
I didn’t realize it at the time, but the reason I had created my own world in the first place is because I desperately wanted an escape from my real life woes about gender identity and my sexuality. I learned through anthro art the relationship between the furry fan and their fursona, and I was like, “I want one, too.” I REALLY liked the idea of being a person, but WITHOUT the BS human limitations that were contributing to my gender dysphoria.
So, I guess I stumbled upon the fandom initially because I wanted to get better at art, but the reason I stuck around is because it offered a safe space for me to explore identity. That was the real awakening.
I’m 99% sure everything for me can be traced back to Blinx: The Time Sweeper, an old Xbox exclusive with anthro cats and pigs. Really awesome game, and to this day, I think it was a gem of mechanics and dynamics that it’s a pity never became something more. That would’ve started in around '06. I was 3-4.
I didn’t know the concept of furry until '16 or so, when I would’ve been 13-14. I had a fascination with fur and animal stuff, and a younger friend (he was like 12) said something like “Oh, so you’re a furry?” A few googles later…I was like GOD NO. Came back by early-2017, with a more careful Google and an open mind, and yeah, I was. Joined a furry forum in mid-2017, and the rest is history. Seen a lot of stuff in my time here, but unfortunately, I arrived too late to see a lot of the furry community that used to exist in my local area. Just a few years too young to have caught RCFM.
My anthro awakening was Blacksad, but i circled around the furry fandom for years and years before joining last year.
Circa 2010 i was feverishly googling “tiger girl” looking for pictures of elvish girl in the forest with her pet tiger, you know, that kind of fantasy art; and i found some obscure forum where someone posted a furry drawing of a tiger girl, and someone commented ‘can someone please draw a furry that isn’t trying to be sexy’, and i’m like ‘what’s a furry’
But even just that anecdote already hints at why i didn’t join the fandom: there was less SFW furry content back then, and i was a lot more prudish. Both have changed since.
So, you know, on the list of things i could/should have done ten years ago, there’s that.
Being a furry never felt like a conversion or choice to me, it’s just something I’ve always been. It probably showed its first signs around when I was like ~8, being interested in reading about dragons and werewolves. Eventually figured out I was more interested in werewolves than other people were, and being terminally online I stumbled upon the VCL imageboard and a lot of stuff clicked into place. Figuring out I was gay was also hand in hand with learning about furries, so props to the furry community for helping with that.
I know a lot of people consciously choose to be a furry at some point but I wonder how many people are just locked into it from the start, like how I feel.
Even here there have been a few comments (including my own) of some specific media making them realize they like anthros a lot, which I’d say is on par with any other fiction like folklore dragons or werewolves piquing your interest. I was furry before I knew a single other person on earth that felt this way, it just took a while to find a word for it and be involved with the fandom at all.
Geometry Dash
This has me curious, as I don’t know the game too well. Are their maps with furry content on them? Maybe a content creator with a fursona, or perhaps fan art of the game?
Surprisingly, I’ve played a gigantic amount of time at this game and i only remember one level where there was kinda furry content in it, but can’t remember the name.
I actually found the furry fandom through someone i met on this game. I was young and cringe and i noticed another player’s level that i thought was cool and asked him for a collab. We did a level together and we continued to talk via discord, where he sent me some of his artworks sometimes. I was amazed by this, i really love those drawings. And so after searching for similar pieces i found what are furries and since then I can pass a day without thinking about fluff xD. Unfortunatly we lost contact, but it was a really sweet person and i enjoyed chatting with him a lot.
If you want here is the level we made.
Sometime in 2013 or 2014 my brother called my art furry art as an insult and something to avoid, I didn’t really know what a furry was. This was the biggest mistake of his life.
Considering how talented furry artists tend to be, that is a pretty funny insult. Bro really took all the Ls on that day.
