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!
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.
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.
