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Dear Papabear:

How are you? I'm mostly fine. While I am not exactly a furry (I still don't know if I am or not, but I am well informed of what does being a furry imply) I have enjoyed reading your column since a few time ago, and I like the way you help people with their problems. Unfortunately, this is the exact reason I'm writing this letter, I have a problem.

Now, my problem isn't that I'm not sure if I'm a furry or what to do if I really am a furry (I have had this question since I was 14). I can figure that out as I continue to live life. The real problem is that in a few hours I will turn 18. It might sound a bit dramatic for me to worry about my birthday, but the real problem is that I'm afraid to grow up.

I have always enjoyed the present, and don't yearn for the future as other teens do, however that has caused me to dislike growing up. I feel I'm just right at this age, plus being 18 means a lot of responsibilities (legal age in my country).

I knew I had a phobia because I have been distressed all month because of this. Then I thought I was okay, until my parents celebrated my birthday a day before the actual date (my dad cannot celebrate tomorrow, he loves me though). The moment I saw the 18 candles in the cake, and everyone congratulating me for "being an adult" I almost break to tears.

I know it is not the end of the world or my life, and that the legal responsibilities aren't my real fear, it's just an excuse I made up for anyone who asked, and I know changes are mostly for the better. While I can adapt almost to every situation, this feels different, I'm really feel scared, upset, and sad. 

I remember I have always wanted to stay young, almost like the kids in the series "kids next door" in which adults were villains, and that growing up is something bad. That could describe my situation (of course I don't see adults as villains)

I still feel like a kid (I'm really mature though, don't believe I act like a little kid) and this transition in my life really scares me. I feel I'm not ready.

I have a loving family which I also feel I'm leaving behind, not only because I'm growing, but because they are getting older too.

I also don't know what I'm afraid of exactly, because even though I'm afraid of growing up, I don't know why.

I could really use a good advice now, and if this letter manages to reach you, I would like to thank you for taking some time to read it. It would mean a lot to me.

Always your fan, either furry or not furry, with the heart of a child

Not quite a Furry
(maybe someday I can choose a more suitable pseudonym) 

* * * 

Dear Not Quite,

I believe that the reason a lot of people are furries is because, like you, they don’t want to “grow up.” This can be a good or bad thing, depending upon your approach. I’m going to borrow my mate Yogi’s story as an example. He likes to say, “I tried growing up once, but it didn’t work out.” This is in reference to his brief career selling insurance (he’s a radio and TV news professional). At a down point in his career, he took the job to make money, but quickly gave it up because it was so boring and not fun at all. More recently, when the broadcast media world changed for the worse, he lost his job as a news director and on-air personality. Instead of taking another dull-as-nails job, he started his own Internet radio station. It’s terribly hard work and the pay is not great (yet), but he is pursuing what he loves and makes him happy.

Many people fear growing up because they think it’s the end of fun. This is where choosing a career is vitally important. As they say, if you do something for a living that you enjoy, you’ll never work a day in your life. My early career in publishing was like that. I absolutely loved my days as an assistant and associate editor and looked forward to going to work (that changed as the business changed). When it became too corporatized for my taste, I went freelance. It’s been hard, but I get to sit at home (love the commute!) and read interesting books.

My first advice to you, therefore, is to find something you love to do and then turn it into your career passion. Don’t worry about what that passion is. People make careers out of all sorts of things! There are people who, for example, make custom skateboards or become dress designers or pursue sports professionally or train dolphins. Here’s an article about that you might like to read: http://www.more.com/reinvention-money/second-acts/turning-your-private-passion-career. 

The point is, finding something you love to do and making money at it will make you look forward to the future instead of the past.

Another issue is the fear of responsibilities: earning an income, paying taxes, taking care of your bills, buying a car, getting insurance, buying groceries and cooking for yourself, doing the laundry, worrying about local and world politics, etc. etc. etc. People want to be taken care of by their parents or other family; some people even get married because they hope their spouse will take care of them. They don’t want to have to deal with all the stuff that comes with taking care of yourself.

You mention that you feel unprepared for adulthood. I know how that can be. When I finished high school, my parents pushed me to go to a big university, so I was accepted at the University of Michigan. Absolutely. Hated. It. I have never felt so much like an anonymous number in my life. I was emotionally and psychologically unprepared for taking care of myself and never felt so lonely and afraid in my life. I was, sincerely, terrified. I had a meltdown and ended up going home and taking nearly a year off. Then, I went to a small local college and did much better.

I believe the problem, in part, was that my parents were overprotective and I was a shy and kind of hermit-like guy (I’m very different now LOL). My parents didn’t really teach me the fundamentals, such as taking care of a bank account, how to make new friends in an unfamiliar environment, how to handle and navigate a large bureaucracy such as a mega-university, etc.

My second piece of advice, therefore, is to ask your parents (I’m thinking this hasn’t happened yet) about such basics as managing money, cooking, cleaning, taxes, holding down a job, navigating through social life, and other issues involved in independent living. They should be your instructors on how to become a self-supporting adult. They can do a lot to ease the transition for you from dependent child to confident, independent adult. Use your parents (and any other family who might help, such as older siblings, uncles, aunts....) as a resource.

Growing up doesn’t mean you have to become boring (as Yogi found out). You don’t have to play bridge with the neighbors, complaining about taxes and your latest medical procedure. This is where the furry comes in! A big part of being furry is hugging the kid inside you. I can’t wait for Halloween, for example. I am putting on my Grubbs fursuit and handing out candy to the neighbor kids, making sure they get hugs and photo ops! Had a blast last year! Then, after that, I’m going downtown to see the costume contests and party. I’m 49 and still feel like a kid inside.

The transition from child to adult means you have to stop being childish, but it doesn’t mean you have to stop being childlike! Childish things include being selfish, not taking responsibility for your actions, and refusing to do the things that need to be done. But if you are childlike you maintain the wonder and joy of life. It is the childlike people in the world who make life special. People, for me, who come to mind in this area would be Jim Henson, Steve Irwin, John Denver, Jim Carrey, Carl Sagan, Jim Parsons, and Robin Williams. Did they have problems in their lives and have to act like adults? Certainly, but what amazing lives they lead (or led). (You might think Robin Williams is a bad example, given his suicide, but I don’t; his mental issues were another matter, sadly, but he still had that magnificent air of wonder about him).

In summary: find a passion in life; learn the ropes of being an adult; but don’t lose your grasp of your inner child. And stay furry! It helps!

Hugs,

Papabear

I'm thinking of wearing my suit to all my classes; I'll post photos with my teachers if that ends up happening. What's everyone else doing for Halloween?

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Hey guys! I'm kinda bored and I'm looking for a new book to read. So, what's everyone's favorite book/author?

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Even during the apocalypse dogs will still be dogs.

I speak both English and French, and was wondering how many other furs can speak more than one language. Bonus points if it's one of the "harder" languages that don't use a Latin alphabet (Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Russian etc.).

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Hi there. I've been a furry for a while but have never really done any furry art. All of my animal art ends up being feral or chibi style. I'm happy with my new chibi anthro style that I'm working on at the moment and wondered if anyone would like a free one. I warn you they will not be good but hey, they're free.

Comment below with a link to your sona or just describe it and I'll see what I can do. I will do 10 to start with.

Edit: It's 3:24 in NZ right now so I'll be checking the time signatures on the comments to select the last 7. Goodnight.

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Hello all my fellow fluffbutts. Sorry to make such a long post for such an easy question, but I feel like context is relatively important, so here we go.

I'm an aspiring electronic music producer. I've been working at it for about 2 years now, and I've tried everything from speedcore to deep house (And been fairly successful with many genres!). I don't suck, but I sure as hell ain't professional level of skill by any means, I don't think.

For a good while, I was producing and releasing things onto a couple of YouTube channels and SoundCloud accounts, not to mention trying to manage a Bandcamp as well. I was doing all this in the MLP fandom though, and before you start ranting about bronies please allow me to finish these next two paragraphs at least.

The reason I'm posting this message HERE and not on r/MLPLounge or something is because I've honestly stopped being as invested in that fandom as I was when I first started producing and releasing tracks. I've not really enjoyed the recent movies, the show has really kinda lost me for various reasons, and just generally it's gotten really eh overall.

Now, this and some heavy thinking and discussion with friends recently has led me to come to the conclusion that I should stop producing and releasing things into that fandom and instead start putting stuff in here with all you guys. The biggest reasons I came to this conclusion are that generally, I like this fandom better, the community is more pelasant, I'm more heavily invested in it, a lot of my best friends came from here, and I just feel like I fit in a hell of a lot more here than there. In short, y'all are awesome in more ways than one.

With all the context out of the way, I feel like I can just bluntly state the question I have after all this. Besides FurAffinity and maybe FurGather, where are good places to post my music? Is there such a thing as a furry specific music site or other generally good places to post?

Thanks for reading, love you all!

TL;DR: Where could I post my music that's good for getting exposure in this fandom?

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The furry fandom originated, according to most accounts, back in the late 80s, when a group of cartoonists got together to share their love of drawing anthropomorphic animals. Many old-time furries cite Steve Gallacci’s Albedo Anthropomorphics as the earliest “modern furry” comic, and Gallacci’s table at a southern California science fiction convention as the focal point that led to ConFurence Zero. Wherever it started, furry fandom diverged quickly from science fiction in practice, if not in theory. Furry tracks at SF cons quickly grew to the point that organizers chose (or, according to some accounts, were asked) to start their own conventions. This began a divide between furry and SF/F fandoms that only grew as furry began to generate its own stories and novels more specifically relevant to its fans.

On the face of it, furry fiction would appear to be inseparable from science fiction. The main characters of furry stories are anthropomorphic animals, creatures that do not exist in the real world. What can that be but science fiction or fantasy? And yet SF/F has been as reluctant to embrace furry as furry has been to return to SF/F. There are SF/F stories with anthropomorphic animal characters, I am often reminded, but they do not seem to be as popular in the fandom as the home-grown furry books.

The central thing that makes a story furry is the quality of its characters. What makes a story science fiction is the idea behind it, the “what if” in a scientific sense. What makes a story fantasy is the worldbuilding (even urban fantasy builds a whole hidden world to graft onto our real one). These are pretty diverse concepts, and it should be easy when you look at them this way to see how a story can be one but neither of the other two–or could be furry fantasy or furry SF (fantasy and SF are traditionally separate, because when you build a new world for your fantasy story, the scientific “what if” loses its context; science fiction is traditionally at least based in the real world and real science).

If your story’s central idea is “how would the world change if everyone became an animal-person,” then that falls into the realm of science fiction (or, some might argue, fantasy, or slipstream; at the very least, it’s speculative fiction). If your story is about a new world in which everyone is an animal-person, then you are pretty okay with fantasy (my own Argaea series is sort of thinly fantasy, because there is no spellcasting nor anything else fantastical–except the characters). If your story is “how hard is it to be gay when society wants you to be straight, and also you’re a fox,” well. That’s not science fiction, and it’s not fantasy: it’s our real world with animal-people dropped in place of human people and the world changed to suit them. Scent markers become important and houses take on different shapes and sizes, for instance. But that’s not enough to make it a fantasy world.

So a subset of furry fiction is SF, and a larger subset is fantasy. But there’s a bunch of furry fiction that is just exploring human stories in the real world without enough fantasy or SF elements to appeal to readers of those genres. This seems to put furry into the realm of plain ol’ fiction, with furries a metaphor for people, or a way to have character types defined. But of course, making everyone a furry is a little far out for most modern fiction as well. Science fiction and fantasy fandoms have the most in common with furry fandom, and yet you can’t get past the fact that many SF/F fans don’t want to read furry stories–in some cases because they’re not weird enough.

I don’t think the fandoms need to merge or aggressively court each other’s fans, but I would like to see more communication between them. Furry is growing while SF/F is shrinking, or at least growing at a slower rate (if you exclude YA and video gamers and TV fans, which the core fandom continues to try to do), and yet the writing part of the SF/F fandom is chugging along just fine.

As furry fiction continues to grow and gain a wider audience in the fandom, I hope furries will look outside to what fantasy and SF are doing. There are some great stories being written in both fandoms, and though SF/F has the more accomplished stable of writers now, furry is on its way up. I think furry writers specifically could bring a lot of wonderful things back to the fandom from the SF/F books that are coming out now, things like cultural diversity and experimentation with literary forms, and sheer breadth of imagination.

Furry fiction has much to offer in return: the diversity of lifestyles in the furry fandom (QUILTBAG1 people are well represented and visible, and that is reflected in our fiction), and a way of reimagining our bodies and identities that is currently only skimmed in SF/F, an association with animal forms that has a rich literary and mythological tradition.

Some SF/F fans I’ve encountered won’t try any furry books–even the SF/F ones–but they’re missing out. Just because you don’t want to read all the books in a genre doesn’t mean you won’t want to read any. My “Dev and Lee” series has gained a pretty nice following among gay romance fans who recognize that at the heart of the story, there are people, no matter whether they have fur and tails or not. Do those people also want to read Kevin Frane’s excellent SF-furry novel Summerhill, which has a very minor gay romance in it? Not so much. But that doesn’t stop them from enjoying the furry books that do appeal to them.

Furry is not science fiction, nor is it fantasy–nor should it be. Furry is its own thing (I have heard from people who say “I just don’t want to read stories without furries in them”), and it has a vibrant, creative fandom. I am seeing more SF/F markets open to furry stories that otherwise fit their criteria, and more furries showing interest again in the SF/F world. This kind of cross-pollination of creative communities can only result in good things for both.

1. A more inclusive evolution of the acronym LGBT. See Julia Rios’ “Reaching into the QUILTBAG: The Evolving World of Queer Speculative Fiction” for more. –Ed. ↩

A few weeks ago I posted about a YCH I was holding and what not.

http://www.reddit.com/r/furry/comments/2imu5d/my_first_ever_ych_to_go_with_the_halloween_season/

YCH Post: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/14724296/

It didn't really get much response but I was glad to have a response from a local group and it was very fun working on it. It took longer than expected due to lack of communication from the winner, but I was able to finally finish it and I'm very happy being able to finish my first YCH.

Completed Work: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/14859211/

bows Thank you everyone~! It was a very nice experience that I hope to do more often.

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War Dog & Marginalized Populations
Jane, Jill and Jasie
(Two ebooks, $2.99 each)
Stories by Malcolm Cross
Cover Art by Meesh
Bad Dog Books, July 2013

Anthropomorphic animal characters have been around as long as stories themselves, yet how to justify them–especially if they’re assumed, implicitly or explicitly, to be attractive to humans–has long been a preoccupation in furry fandom. Are they aliens? Uplifted animals? Genetic crossbreeds? Magical constructs? Do we even need to justify them, or is just showing that they’re distinct races–not merely “humans in animal costumes,” as the charge goes–enough?

Malcolm Cross’s two recent ebook-only collections, War Dog & Marginalized Populations and Jane, Jill and Jasie, seem at first glance to positively revel in worn cliché. Genetically engineered animal people created to be soldiers and sex toys. Referring to them as “furries” within the text (and without irony). It’s all the more remarkable, therefore, not only how accomplished these stories are, but how thought-provoking they turn out to be.

The first of the two contains the two stories in its title, while the second contains three stories: “Dick and Jane,” “Jill’s Forty-Ninth” and “Jasie’s New Start.” All of the stories are written in a third person tightly bound to the given viewpoint character’s voice, a style readers of Cross’s recent Ursa Major winner, “Dangerous Jade,” will be familiar with. Like “Jade,” these stories are set in the country of San Iadras, a milieu that seems to possess Dubai’s wealth and Monte Carlo’s licentiousness. The history of the furries is never spelled out, but we can infer the different species were uplifted for different purposes: dogs for the military, rabbits as personal care assistants, and thylacines–a doglike carnivorous marsupial, now extinct–as adult companions. At some point before the stories’ timeline, though, their legal status in San Iadras changed, and they’re now free citizens.

And yes, we’ve seen that rough premise before, in furry fandom at least back to Dave Bryant’s and Ken Pick’s “Wormholes” setting and in sci-fi at least back to Cordwainer Smith‘s “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell.” But we’ve most often seen these worlds through humans coming to understand that furries are people too. Cross’s viewpoint is that of the furry: designed for purposes they’re no longer subject to, adopted out to human families often ill-equipped to deal with them and now making their adult lives in a society that, while accepting, doesn’t quite understand them.

“War Dog” is the story of one of those adoptions, with a school-age child; while it’s a story of trying to fit in–nearly all stories set in school are–being a human-sized dog among human children is the least of Eschowitz’s challenges. “Marginalized Populations” follows soldier dogs a few years later, trying to find private military work. While “War Dog” is the longest of the five stories and in some ways the most complete, the stories of the thylacines–even with sex scenes which might best be called blunt rather than merely explicit–mine surprisingly emotional territory.

These stories are not morality plays of good furries and bad humans; the characters are all complex, even the ones who seem straightforward. (Often especially those ones.) There are several heartbreaking moments–often unexpectedly so, as when Jane (in “Dick and Jane”) breaks down after discovering the relationship she’s in isn’t at all what she thinks it is. Yet none of these stories are tragedies. “Jasie’s New Start” has an unreservedly happy ending. All five pieces arguably end with their protagonists in better places than where they started.

Yet the question of just what a happy ending is looms large in “War Dog” and “Marginalized Populations” and never stays far away in the thylacine stories. Each piece here explores the age-old nature versus nurture question–not to argue for one side or the other as much as to simply make us think about it. After reading these, one can’t help but acutely feel the absence of this in most other stories–and there’s a lot of them in this fandom–built on the trope of genetic engineering. You may be against war in general and very much against the notion of designing intelligent beings to be soldiers, yet freeing them doesn’t stop them from being soldiers. Jane, Jill and Jasie–and their one hundred and sixty-six other cloned sisters, all named “J” and all virtually impossible to tell apart even for one another–are engineered not for fighting but to be party girls. The reader understands more of what drives Eschowitz than he does himself very shortly into his story; the “J” sisters are likewise affected more by their programming than they–at least most of them–understand. It’s not a matter of what they want; it’s a matter of what they must. For the dogs, their design is their dilemma; for the thylacines, their design frequently creates their dilemmas. Or perhaps it’s the other way around.

If I have any nitpicks–and frankly this is straining a little–it’s with how similar to our current world San Iadras seems. The train Jasie takes in her story is a maglev and Eschowitz’s story features “smartpaper,” but for the most part the pieces could take place today if we just happened to have genetically engineered animal-people about. This makes the stories more accessible than they might be if the setting were more alien, but it’s hard not to wonder if everyday life in San Iadras–especially in the echelons of high society the thylacines inhabit–shouldn’t feature a few more futuristic touches than we see.

In the works I’ve read by him, Cross shows an extremely distinctive voice, staying so much in the viewpoint character’s head that it borders on stream of consciousness. This can be unsettling or even off-putting; an uncareful reader might dismiss the thylacines as bobbleheads, and the dogs are just as focused in their own ways. But there are few genuine stylists among furry authors and even fewer this good. These five stories are quick but hardly ephemeral, and they’re more than worth their asking price.

Seeing so many different ways furries communicate and group together online lately has really got me thinking. Where do you spend the most of your time online in the furry fandom?

For me I would have to say most of my time is spent chatting with furs on Twitter or browsing Fur Affinity. (besides reddit of course!) :3

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Xander and Roxas talk about all the games that go bump in the night! Five Nights at Freddy's, the sequel, Eternal Darkness, Clock Tower, Resident Evil, and more!! Plus we talk about recommended scary games, what we're playing, and all sorts of stuff. Enjoy! Fuzzy Graphics: BOO! Scary Games! - Xander and Roxas talk about all the games that go bump in the night! Five Nights at Freddy's, th...

I'm semi new here, I've been lurking around for a while but figured I would try to do that less. Anyway I'm curious about the story behind everyone's furonsa. How did you come up with it? Design, name, personality etc.

For me, after about a year of lurking around FA I could only narrow it down to a Husky and a Fox, and after browsing the artwork to see what I liked I found a certain Mint-Chocolate colored Husky up for adoption. The more i looked at it/thought about it the more I loved it.

For his personality I sort of mixed what my own personality and what I wanted to be more like, and his name is just a reflection of his overall personality.

Van, my fursona I still need to get a more detailed ref sheet done and I'm still working on the smaller details but I hope you all like it :D

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