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submitted by HarmonyHeartstrings
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Um... Hello Papabear,

I've never done an online advice thing like this before so putting myself out there like this is kind of unnerving, but hear me out anyway alright? Basically, I am pretty typical in the furry world, but not so much anywhere else. I have been interested in the furry fandom since just before high school and have been involved in it with relatively low activity for all of high school. A few years prior to this, though, I discovered on a few accounts my interest in men. I never really had an internal conflict or whatever at this point since it was pretty much just a sexual desire paired with something I knew would never be accepted where I live. Of course, in terms of how it affected me, it just meant I was honest with myself when experimenting with things online such as pornography and sexual urges. I didn't really feel the need to ever be coaxed out of the closet at all until the furry fandom came along and treated me as an equal per se.

I just sort of found out about it all through random keywords appearing in random internet jokes, such as yiff, fetish, etc. When looking into things further, I found out about the chat rooms on deviantart.com which eventually led to me making a good number of friends that I talked to quite regularly and even a 2 month internet boyfriend. Since I couldn't fully be myself at school at the time, I would come home to talk to them and often enjoy some casual role play and yiff whenever. However, these habits were sort of forced out of me the following year, considering I applied and was accepted into a boarding school where school would keep me busy for my last three years of school (I just graduated in May). While I did learn to experiment sexually in my comfort zone at school (boys' dorm) with others as opposed to from behind a computer screen, I lost the vital connections I had with internet friends I used to vent everything to. I did make some fun friends at boarding school, but through various situations, very few of them stuck around in the end, so the end of my senior year often felt lonely at times.

Keep in mind, I was able to come out during my sophomore year at my school, but after the hype and extravagance of coming out of the closet wore off, people weren't really so interested in me. It's worth mentioning that during the summer between my sophomore and junior years after having just come out at school, I ended up attempting to come out to my parents as well. This, of course, didn't go well at all. They didn't get that mad, but they were firm in their beliefs of right and wrong and more or less just said that they didn't believe me. So, there was a long period of being cut off from all communication with the outside world and long Jesus talks followed by anti-gay counseling, which didn't last long anyways because I had to return to school for the following school year.

At first, I went along with the whole trying to turn my life around thing, but I just ended up hating myself more and more because of it. I remembered how much I wanted to get out of the rigid tradition of the South that had always been forced on me. Essentially, my parents had originally presented my options as "change" or forget about any further financial support (i.e. college) from them in the future. In fact, I almost wasn't allowed to return to my school the next year because I had to also admit that I had been sexually active there. Other measures taken were to try to monitor my computer more closely and shut off the internet at a certain time at night while I was at home. In fact, that cut-off rule is still in place most of the time while I'm at home these days. Additionally, my mom is always on Facebook and if I add any new friends or join any kinds of groups (furry or not), she pretty much gets a notification right away. (When I was living away at school, she would sometimes call and yell at me simply because she did not like the content of my status update, albeit I have always refrained from public use of directly inappropriate content and profanity on account of my other family members seeing.)

The fact is, my parents don't trust me. I don't really blame them. I wouldn't trust me either at this point. In their rigid view of what is right and wrong, going online to meet people for even the most casual of conversations is just wrong and creepy. I know that they love me a lot, but they completely block out any ideas of me being interested in men at all and always point out the appeal of my various female friends as if nothing ever happened. They obviously don't know about the furry fandom or anything so attempting to frequent websites like deviantart or FurAffinity is always risky. My room is positioned so that they could walk in at any moment and see what I'm doing online or not. Thankfully, I'll be moving away to college soon, but there are still some problems.

First off, my experience with general "LGBT community" groups apart from furries hasn't been very positive. They are usually based around a specific friend group and they are interested in more campy, typical gay things. I found that I felt almost as invisible as I was at my old school before I had ever come out in the first place... That being said, I feel more at home as an individual with furries and online geek groups where it isn't so much about what sexual label we wear as it is about what we are interested in, sexual or not. I've become a huge fan of various furry artists and have even had a few requests done. I absolutely love anthro characters and quickly formulated my own fursona (I have always been cuddly so my close relatives always called me "Bear") and subscribed to get the latest info on what was going on in the fandom. It is my dream to go to Anthrocon as well and I have at least 20 albums from furry/chiptunes artists like Renard from lapfoxtrax.com loaded on my iPod and can't seem to get enough. I really do love everything about it. I feel that since I have been able to at least chat with some people, I was able to expand my horizons and learn about other ways of life. "Furry" for me was more about a collective psychology based on the ideas of trying to be ironically more human(e) towards one another. Granted, with a love of animals and fantasy characters, the actual animal part of it all came naturally too. It is complicated and not exactly something I'd want to explain to anyone unless they had a similar positive experience with the fandom. (That rules out my parents.)

Anyways, here is my primary dilemma. As I mentioned before, the friends I had online have kinda been separated over time and I've lost contact with all but one of them. With my parents being so invasive as well as demanding to read my texts sometimes, it has pushed away even some of my IRL friends. They say that they are afraid to text me because my parents don't respect my privacy. Then again, they feel justified because I'm wrong anyway. Essentially, I want to get out and go to furry conventions and live it up and have friends to go to these events with and have fun, but right now I just don't have any. I'll be attending the University of Alabama, but I don't know of any resources or furmeets or anything that I could hook into there. I just want to get my feet rooted back in the things I have neglected through high school or have lost contact with. I owe it to myself after working so hard to experiment with relationships I feel comfortable and open in as opposed to just sleeping around in a dormitory. I suppose what I'm really trying to say is that I miss the companionship and feeling like I was a part of a more open "family."

I moved away from most of my relatives due to my dad's job at a young age, so at home it is just me and my parents. (My brother recently moved out after graduating college with a bachelor's degree.) The prime opportunity to connect with furries in real life and online once again would be when I'm in college and available to do more on my own, after all, and I don't want to wait until I'm old and gray to get back in either. So, could you help direct me to some way of meeting fellow furries in my area for the sake of going to cons together as well as getting started as a more active member of the fandom as a whole? I was never good at making art or music, but I want to be more involved somehow. I think I will finally have the wiggle room to do something about this when I'm living at my apartment in college. At least, that's what I'm hoping for...

Thanks Papa. I hope this wasn't too long or boring!

Sincerely,

Tony the fellow bear

P.S. Any advice about dealing with invasive parents is welcome as well.

* * *

Dear Tony,

My goodness, I hope that writing that letter was a good catharsis for you. And I am sorry that your parents are so oppressive and cannot accept you for you. Unfortunately, that attitude is a lot more common in the world than it should be. They don’t realize that constantly monitoring your behavior and controlling you is damaging their relationship with their son. They also don’t realize that, by doing this, they are doing nothing that is going to change who you are. It just doesn’t work that way. Makes about as much sense as forcing one’s 5-foot-tall son to shoot hoops every day in the hopes that he will eventually become an NBA superstar.

Really, your only hope, when it comes to your parents, is to become independent of them so that they can no longer control you, which is what college will help you do. Keep your head low until you can finish a degree and get your first job. After that, be an example to your parents that you are a good, hard-working man and that being gay is just one aspect of who you are. Depending on their mindset, and the size of their hearts, it should eventually dawn on them that they should love you no matter your sexual orientation. If their hearts never open up, then that is just a tragedy, but you will need to recognize that it is not a reflection upon you but upon their lack of character, sorry to say.

Some quick (and rather sneaky) advice on getting around your parents’ invasiveness: buy your own laptop (you can get very good ones for about $260 these days, which still blows my mind) so you don’t have to worry about any parental controls or spying programs they may have installed on the computer you currently use, and open up new accounts on your favorite sites. Meanwhile, keep your old accounts—the ones your parents have access to—open and occasionally post benign messages there. Essentially, the old accounts become decoys.

Is this all lying to your parents? Yes, it is. But it’s not lying to them because you are doing drugs, getting drunk, and committing crimes; it’s lying to them because they have judged and sentenced you to their own kind of prison when you have done nothing wrong. Denying someone the right to be him- or herself is, to my mind, one of the worst things you can do to another human being, especially when it is perpetrated against one’s own child.

So, you are off to the University of Alabama. Let’s see what’s in your neck of the woods *flips through his furry black book.* Well, of course, there is Rocket City Furmeet in Huntsville. The 2013 convention was postponed until 2014 because the organizers couldn’t find a hotel, but they are working on it. And to start getting in touch with nearby furries, I would suggest you join Bamafurs at http://www.bamafurs.org. Their website has great forums and boards where you can discover all the events around the state.

I love how you said “I owe it to myself” to get “my feet rooted back in the things I have neglected.” That shows Papabear you have not allowed your experience with your parents to beat down your spirit. YES! You DO owe it to yourself to be who you want to be and pursue the friendships and experiences you want to pursue. With an attitude like that, Papabear has great confidence that you will do just that.

Now what you have to eliminate is any remaining guilt. That whole line where you say “I don’t really blame them” for not trusting you? Drop that crap. You have nothing to feel guilty about. You have no obligation to uphold their oppressive standards of behavior if you do not believe in them. There is nothing morally wrong about being gay or bi or whatever, nor is there anything wrong with being a furry. Heck, even the Pope himself recently said he didn’t have the right to judge gay people.

Work and study hard. Have the courage to be yourself. Be a good person, treat others with kindness, and you will have a good life.

And look for the paw prints in the path before you, and your spirit bear will show you the way.

Papabear

Through 3 days of studying and practice, I think I might finally have the first step down :3 Thanks to everyone that helped me out a while back, giving me links to various places. I found many tutorials and various other things to help me get this far this quickly, I wasn't expecting being able to draw a full head this soon into learning, but thanks to your help I am.

Please, DO Critisize me, I want to know what I can fix and what still needs to be done! I know there are no eyes, but that's because I haven't learned that far into it to know how to do details such as that, just basic shapes and the like. And I'm sorry about it not being very big, But it was just spur of the moment while playing Mahjong on SL With a friend :P

Pic: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/11301957/

Edit: Finished it up while sitting here, added the rest of his shoulder and colored

Pic: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/11302428/

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submitted by IonOtter
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Author: Hi Papabear, it’s me again.The relationship took a turn for the worse. He only wanted sex, like I feared, and I broke it off. He ended up missing me, so when he contacted me I told him all about myself, and he “changed his mind” very abruptly. So I think I’m done trying to […]

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What would an underwater world be like? When we did our furry world series last year, most of what we discussed assumed a land-based environment, but we thought it was time to explore a different setting. How would they communicate? What would they do for food? How would culture and technology develop? Listen as we answer all these and more on the latest edition of WagzTail!

Metadata and Credits WagzTail Podcast 2.0 Episode 90
Runtime: 30m
Cast: Levi, Syruss, Wolfin
Editor: Levi
Format: 128kbps ABR split-stereo MP3
Copyright: © 2013 WagzTail.com. Some Rights Reserved. This podcast is released by WagzTail.com as CC BY-ND 3.0. If distributed with a facility that has an existing agreement in place with a Professional Rights Organisation (PRO), file a cue sheet for 26:00 to Fabien Renoult (BMI) 1.67%, Josquin des Pres (BMI) 1.67%, WagzTail.com 96.67%. Rights have been acquired to all content for national and international broadcast and web release with no royalties due. Podcast image belongs to Robert Linder, used with permission. Aquatic Societies - What would an underwater world be like? When we did our furry world series last year, most of what we discussed assumed a land-based environment, but we thought it was time to explore a different setting. How would they communicate?

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Author: KnotCast@foxstuffers.com This week on Knotcast, Shiva is out partying hard so we get Avery back on. He gets to come on as a regular guest, even though he still answers some questions from his last couple appearances. Such is the life of a drag queen sex toy diva. This weeks song is “Silent Falls” […] KnotCast: Episode 228 – Regular Dragon Time

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This weekend, I had the privilege of helping facilitate a panel at Rocky Mountain Fur Con 2013 surrounding the topic of species selection and character creation. The panel was a delightful discussion about the ways in which we build up the avatars we use to interact within our subculture, and why exactly it is that we choose the animal (or animals) that we become with our character (or characters).

That’s not all, though. I also had the privilege of sitting down with Klisoura, [a][s] contributor of Furry Survey fame, and having not only several delightful discussions on topics as diverse as tennis balls and coyotes, but also a little impromptu hack-a-thon in the hotel lobby on the subject of species selection. This tied in well enough with the panel that some of the results of that were shown during the Q&A after the discussion, and even led to several other conversations with various different furries over dinner and the next day. The whole weekend was a blast, but I’d like to tie up some of these conversation threads and ideas into something worth showing here on [a][s].

The title of that particular panel was the same as this post, “Species Selection and Character Creation”, and was intended to be something new for me, and, I felt, relatively new for the convention as well. Rather than sit behind the table at the head of the discussion room and dictate a set of ideas to an audience, my goal was to re-arrange the chairs in the room into a circle and have everyone participate evenly in a sort of Socratic-style exploration of species and avatar. However, given the hour of sleep I’d had the night before, it worked out somewhere in between. While the Socratic “asking questions to receive answers everyone already knows about themselves” part worked out pretty well, I wasn’t able to make real the truly participatory experience of everyone being able to see each other. I offer this as an explanation for not simply posting the audio from the panel itself, though it was recorded. If I get around to mastering the audio well enough to make it presentable, I’ll post it here and make note of it. I think it’s worth a listen!

I began by asking the room full of furries why they chose the animal they did for their species, and I received a lot of answers that fit in well with my experience of the fandom. Notable among the explanations were the oft-used words ‘identity’, ‘connection’, ‘personality’, and ‘characteristics’. And this, of course makes sense. Many introductions to furry, whether they’re websites (the first introductory website I found was Captain Packrat’s explanation of FurCodes) or friends, explain that although furry is about being a fan of anthropomorphism in general, it often (but not always) specifically involves a personal connection with an animal that leads to the creation of a personal character: an avatar often used in interaction with other furries.

We all know this, of course, but it’s always interesting to see the data bear it out. A discussion with Klisoura prior to the panel led to an experiment: is such a thing visible in the answers provided by respondents to the furry survey? It turns out that it is, in its own way. On the survey, users are asked the species of their character or characters, and then given room to provide an explanation of just why they chose the species they did. Free-text answers are hard to parse down into simple one-way conclusions, and are not necessarily available to be shared as they stand. However, we can draw conclusions about the use of language itself within these answers, and in this instance, we did so by means of one of the simpler means of textual analysis: frequency counts.

We’ve analyzed the responses for many of the most popular species represented in the responses to the 2012 Furry Survey. Breaking this down by species not only helps us spot keywords such as mentioned above, but also helps us see where additional words, especially emotionally or spiritually charged words, are used when identifying with particular species. Let’s start out with one of the easier ones, for huskies, where I can point to a few of these words in particular to explain what I mean:

We see our previously tagged set of words such as ‘traits’, ‘personality’, and ‘always’ (left in* because it often shows up in constructs such as “I have always felt like I was a husky”). However, we can also see several emotionally charged words such as ‘love’/'loved’, ‘loyal’, ‘cute’, ‘playful’, and ‘beautiful’. These figure strongly as compared to other marked words such as ‘cool’, ‘hard’, ‘submissive’, and ‘spiritual’. Contrasting this with the cloud for wolves shows the difference in species selection:

Here we see a shift in the tagged words to ‘connection’, ‘identify’, as well as ‘personality’, which I think shows a different attitude used to approach the problem of species selection when creating a character. Indeed, we see that ‘spirituality’ figures more strongly, along with ‘pack’, ‘strong’, ‘spirit’, and ‘one’/'alone’, while ‘loyal’ and ‘social’ are deemphasized.

Another interesting thing to note is that, among the several species** we pulled from the database, some are more strongly marked, such as the previous two, and some are not. Those who chose dragon as their species, do so for many, many different reasons than wolves or huskies.

As you can see, there is less polarization around certain terms, both emotionally marked and the previously tagged words; that is, the cloud is more homogeneous. There are a few potential reasons for this. One is the possibility that dragons have cultural ties to more than just western culture. Wolves have both a strong mythology surrounding them in the west, as well as the advantage of being important in current events, given the re-homing and conservation efforts surrounding the species in North America.

While dragons do have a mythology attached to them in the west, it’s very different than their Eastern interpretations, which will lead to less strongly-marked words and phrases showing up in analysis due to a wider spread. Additionally, while dragons are certainly prominent now in fiction words, they are not nearly as prevalent in current events outside of that setting.

These are just some examples, but I think it goes to show that there are indeed some trends, both general and specific, that go into species selection among furries. That’s only part of what goes into the creation of a personal character, though, as I think we might achieve some similar results by asking ordinary people to justify their choice of their favorite animal. Thus, during the panel, we also discussed the processes of character creation, growth, and change.

One exercise that I think works well is imposing artificial restrictions. This was, after all, one of the foundations for the literary group Oulipo, of A Void fame (A Void being a book written originally in French entirely without the letter ‘e’, and then, perhaps even more impressively, translated into English with the same restriction in place). By imposing on ourselves restrictions, we reduce the problem of unfettered, and thus directionless, creativity. In that vein, I asked participants to describe their personal characters – fursonae, if you will – in one sentence or less. The results are telling:

My persona is a reflection of myself ahead in life which I can use as a goal.

and

My fursona is an extension of myself as I move forward in life.

Some were more verbose and specific along these lines:

It’s a coping mechanism, a way to become someone else and not deal with tough times, or even provide an outside perspective on them.

and

Who I strive to become, always a step ahead of me; as I gain attributes, my character stays one step ahead of me. It is my role-model.

Some people got even more creative:

The person with whom I speak.

or

Convenient, exaggerated wish fulfillment.

or simply,

Me.

The theme of “a better version of me” was repeated quite often when discussing both the ways in which characters are created, and the ways in which they change. I really think that this reflects well on us as a subculture. A lot of my focus, when interacting with other furries, is centered around being what I see as an ideal version of myself, as well as just a fox-person. Some of that’s simple and mechanical: “I wish I were able to more clearly express my ideas” and “I wish I were more glib, quippier” are both aided by social interaction through a text-based interface such as one might find online. Beyond that, however, by being able to have this version of myself that is better than me, I, as others mentioned, have something to strive for, something to grow into.

Discussion along these lines continued after the panel itself, as a few of the attendees convinced me to head out to dinner rather than straight up to bed (thanks for that, it was the first real meal of the day). While we ate, we talked about what people took away most from the panel, and also came up with a few additional ideas to help tie together the two ideas of species and character.

One thing that came up was the idea that some gentle joking about species, a sort of lampshading of stereotypes, helps to reinforce species identity with regards to character. Much, if not most of this, as pointed out by Klisoura later on, is self-deprecatory. This helps to forge familiarity between people, especially among members of the same subculture, or even sub-groups within that subculture. Making fun of the chase-instinct in dogs by, as my roommate (a husky) puts it, “huffing the scent of a new can of tennis balls”, or the face-first pouncing of foxes lending to the overall silliness of the species helps not only to strengthen one’s identity with that species but also to provide a conversational starter among friends, or friends-to-be. This can, of course, be mis-applied or simply go too far. The idea that wolves are a dime-a-dozen, or that foxes are all “sluts” are complex and sometimes self-reinforcing stereotypes that, by virtue of their being stereotypes, can rub many the wrong way and cause no small amount of offense.

We also noted another interesting conclusion from the panel. Every time I run the “Exploring the Fandom Through Data” panel, I bring up the idea of doxa – that which we accept as truth without requiring proof – and how sometimes it needs to be challenged when that which is accepted is not necessarily true. For me and several others, one aspect of doxa in particular was challenged during the convention, and it was particularly surprising that this was the case.

One of the attendees at the panel brought up the fact that, during a time of crisis, epiphany, or great change in life, sometimes one’s character also goes through change (in this case, a change in species from fox to rat), in a sense reflecting external events in an extreme way. Even though several of us were surprised that such things as a turning point in life would be shown in something so fundamental as one’s species, it’s one of those things that makes sense upon consideration. Even looking back, for myself, the one time I truly changed species surrounded a profound change in my life. Moving to college – and all that is entailed in that, such as moving away from parents, getting a job, and so on – affected me deeply. That signified a total restructuring of my life, even to the point where the old character I had inhabited, a red fox with two tails, the tips of which were dyed green, no longer applied. It was high-school-me. It was me-growing-up. It is not me now.

The reactions from around the room echoed my sentiment. While most were surprised and intrigued at the concept of an external factor such as a move or an epiphany having so large an effect on someone as to cause a sudden, major restructuring of their furry identity, many, myself included, confirmed that this is not infrequent. Those who were most surprised felt that a sudden crisis such as this would not lead to a major change, but rather influence the direction in which their character grew. That is, their goals would change both for them as well as their character, though aspects such as species would remain. Unfortunately, we ran low on time before we had the chance to investigate the differences in how these two rough groups dealt with their character’s identity, though it is worth investigating! That there is even the trope of the species-change-journal on FA is proof of this.

As a meta-furry resource, [adjective][species] explores a lot of topics surrounding furry, though it seems of late that the focus has been on topics that happen to be ancillary to the fandom itself. These are all dreadfully interesting, I think, but so is much of the stuff at the core of our subculture, this base layer that helps make us who we are. These are the reasons we seek to meet up together at cons such as RMFC, not simply these supplementary reasons such as being ahead of or behind the rest of the world, any skews in sexual orientation or gender, or even movies about cheetahs, though they may all help. These core facets are worth exploring, as they help to form coherence among all these different animal-folk.

If you are interested in more from the panel, the notes are available here.

* The responses were cleaned of some very common words that tended to skew the word-clouds, such as articles (the, a, an), conjunctions (but, and), and the species’ name and plural form of the name which, of course, show up quite often.

** Cats, cheetahs, coyotes, dragons, red foxes, horses, huskies, jackals, rabbits, tigers, and wolves.

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