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Many of you will be vaguely familiar with Gulliver’s Travels, the satirical novel written by Jonathan Swift and published in 1725. However you may not know that the book is overtly furry.

Gulliver is a traveller who, through misadventure, voyages to four unknown lands: Lilliput (a land of little people); Brobdingnag (big people); Laputa (a scientific ruling class repressing an uneducated populous); and finally Houyhnhnmland – land of the rational horses.

Pronunciation note: ‘houyhnhnm’ is the name the horses have given themselves and so should sound much like a horse’s whinny – ‘hwinnum’.

I won’t go into the plot in detail (although I will discuss Houyhnhnmland a little later on) but suffice to say that it’s a very easy and entertaining read. The language isn’t as antiquated as you might think; no more so than the contrivances used by some fantasy authors.

And then there’s the furry content.

For starters there are the rational horses, the houyhnhnms themselves. They talk, they use their forelegs to handle tools and to eat, and they live in a society. In short, they are anthropomorphs.

Swift uses his anthropomorphic horses much in the same way many furry books, and sometimes furries themselves, use anthropomorphs: to reflect on human society. The houyhnhnms are entirely rational and live in a peaceful collective where the concept of lying is unknown. To draw a parallel with a more modern invention, they share similarities with Star Trek’s Vulcans and in many ways, Borg.

Swift goes a step further by including zoomorphic humans: the yahoos. The yahoos are humans stripped of their rational nature. The resulting animal is reduced to a violent, selfish, scatological and sex-driven being. Gulliver is so disgusted by the yahoos that he begins to hate himself as he sees his instincts reflected in their behaviour. He yearns to be less human; more horse.

The entire book, not just the Houyhnhnmland voyage, looks at human society from an outsider’s point of view. This, in my opinion, is how many furries see the ‘human’ world: as a collection of laws and unsaid rules that are often illogical and arbitrary. In each of the four islands visited by Gulliver, he experiences an askew version of England and English society.

Most famously, on the first island, Gulliver is a giant amongst two nations of tiny people who are at war. They are, literally, at war because they disagree over which end of a boiled egg should be sliced off before eating: the big-endians and the little-endians. On his second voyage, Gulliver finds himself the diminutive amongst giants. He attempts to justify the slaughter of his fellow tiny men in the war between England and France by the insignificant perceived differences between the two nations. His explanation is met with the same disbelief and horror that Gulliver expressed over the endian war.

England is no longer at war with France however the metaphor is just as strong today. I think many furries consider themselves to be outsiders from human society, and see many of society’s actions as equally illogical and harmful as the endian war. I don’t think you, reader, will struggle to find a relevant modern-day analogue.

Back in Houyhnhnmland, Gulliver’s Travels explores the conflict between our instinctual, atavistic side and our rationality. By creating beings that are purely rational (the houyhnhnms) and purely animalistic (the yahoos), Swift asks the reader to consider himself. We like to think that we’re rational beings, but how true is that? Surely most of our decision-making is driven by instincts like fear, or sexual desire, or love?

Furries explore the same questions pretty directly. By presenting as non-human (or part-human) animals, we’re disassociating ourselves from the rules of ‘normal’ human behaviour. Starting from a position a half-step away from humanity, and a half-step towards our furry avatar of choice, we think about our animal instincts and consider that perhaps some of the artifices of human behaviour are untenable. The traits that we’ve appropriated from our avatars are usually instinctual ones; instincts that bring us closer to the animal world, and closer to one other. We’ve learned that a hug is often preferable to a handshake.

Through this lens, furries, like Gulliver, can see how humans everywhere are guided by instinct. (Many, if not most, people would deny this.) Once you think of everyone as an animal, it’s easy to see selfish or territorial or lustful behaviour. And it’s easy to see that denying that these behaviours are instinctual, and so applying a sheen of redemptive ‘reasoning’, often leads to harmful outcomes.

The houyhnhnms have no such instincts and accordingly their lives are guided by purely rational principles. They know neither love nor empathy. Decisions are made collectively and never second-guessed. Mating pairs are selected based on genetic synergies. They enslave and freely execute yahoos, rationalising that such wretched creatures cannot have worthwhile quality of life. They eventually exile Gulliver after observing his human flaws.

The furries might say that embracing instincts for what they are – natural – leads to a new understanding of ones self, and leads to the possibility of a richer life. If you are naturally flawed, it’s easier to accept that everyone else is too. The furry community, for all its problems and drama (brilliantly encapsulated in these virtual pages by Makyo), is a welcoming and tolerant one. Swift’s houyhnhnms and yahoos, representing the two extremes of our human animal nature, live in two very different but equal hells.

Gulliver’s Travels is out of copyright, and so is available to download for free from Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org). You can get it in any format imaginable: plain text, Kindle, HTML, even as an audiobook.

No copyright means that there are no royalties payable, and so the story of Gulliver’s Travels has been adapted countless times. The ‘fantastical voyage’ aspect of the story makes it ripe for adaptation into children’s stories, much in the manner of One Thousand and One Nights. The book has also been exploited with varying degrees of adherence to the source material in middlebrow cinema, notably the 1990′s TV miniseries featuring Ted Danson and the recent film starring Jack Black.

Adaptations of Gulliver’s Travels usually focus on the first two of Gulliver’s voyages, where he is respectively huge and tiny amongst the native population. The adaptations usually water down the occasionally explicit sexual content of the novel, which is a key theme. Human sexuality is a major societal motivation and Swift does not withdraw from the topic: Gulliver’s comparatively massive genitals are key to his activities in Lilliput; he becomes a sexual plaything for teenage girls in Brobdingnag; crude sexual advances from pubescent yahoo girls lead to his eventual abandonment by the houyhnhnms.

Gulliver’s Travels and Swift’s houyhnhnms helped me understand my own identity as a furry. It’s given me an insight into myself and also provided the language and framework to allow these ideas to become fully formed. Swift’s focus on the true motivations of the human animal – instincts such as sex and fear – helped me understand that my own motivations are just the same as everyone else.

I sign off my emails as ‘your friendly local houyhnhnm’, but this is not to say that I see myself as a rational being. It’s quite the opposite. The houyhnhnms, for me, are a reminder that I am just an animal. I have instincts that I can’t deny or rationalize away.

Gulliver, on the other hand, is seduced by the logic and the reason of the houyhnhnms. Despite being cast out by the houyhnhnms and being returned to England by sympathetic humans, Gulliver rejects human society outright, seeing only a group of yahoos. He ends the novel as an embittered misanthrope. Sadly this is also the fate of many furries. Like Gulliver, they are blinded to the greatness of society by contemptible human actions, false rationalisations and the other ways in which we humans fail.

Swift encourages the reader to empathize with Gulliver and this is part of the book’s genius and power. We watch and understand his downfall but we ultimately reject Gulliver and his beloved houyhnhnms. We can choose a happier path.

My furry self, the horse, stands for two things: my animal nature that I need to learn to embrace and accept, and the fact that I can use reason and rationality to improve myself and my life. The houyhnhnms and the yahoos are metaphors for our dual nature as human animals. They’re something I’m running towards and away from at the same time.

There is irony here. By stepping away from my human form into my furry one, I’ve learned how to be human. The most human version of myself is the horse.

(click here if video does not load)

Well it’s coming up that time of the year again and much like last year we have a Camp Feral Video. This year the Feral crew is making a “Future” based theme, which should open the door to crazy ideas. Take a look at the first footage I found on behind the scenes and stay tuned for more craziness coming soon. All videos are rated PG unless alcohol is  rated G… cause ya know … in Canada things are different : P

submitted by AstronotusOcellatus
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Come with us this week as we continue our discussions on having and showing faith in a faithless society; also welcome JWingy and Kail’s girlfriend, AJ (she’s taken guys!) to the studio. Join us for the only podcast where coffee is not a suggestion.

Metadata and Credits WagzTail Podcast 2.0 Episode 7
Runtime: 30m
Cast: Levi, Kail, Wolfin, JWingy, AJ
Format: 128kbps ABR split-stereo MP3
Copyright: © 2012 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 30:00 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. Special thanks to sagetyrtle and tandoori for additional sound effects and to tzooka for the Podcast thumbnail for this episode. Episode 7 - Come with us this week as we continue our discussions on having and showing faith in a faithless society; also welcome JWingy and Kail's girlfriend, AJ (she's taken guys!) to the studio. Join us for the only podcast where coffee is not a suggestion.

submitted by Greynois
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Xander & Alkali discuss Super Mario Bros. 2, Arkham Horror, various board games, football, and magicians! BTW, we love feedback! Send your comments and questions to draggetshow@gmail.com 005 - Xander Hates Arkham Horror - Xander & Alkali discuss Super Mario Bros. 2, Arkham Horror, various board games, football, and ma...

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/7306172 also the back story by the commissioner: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3138309/

submitted by CoyoteCookie
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As you all know, the 2012 [a][s] Census and Survey is currently under way.  We’ve got quite a few responses already, and there’s a lot of really neat stuff being said about the fandom.  However, responses are currently only visible to the survey admins and, if you maintained a copy of your code pair, your own survey is visible to yourself.  We did promises that the fandom would benefit from the results, and they will indeed show up in the form of visualizations, articles, and so on here in the near future, but in the mean time, I’d like to share some of the direct results in a few short posts just to give a flavor of how diverse we all are!

For this first post, here are some responses to the question “Describe your process of character creation.”

The species came to my head without even thinking about it. Also, I think that German Shepard are a very beautiful race, full of personality…
Attributes, however are still a work in progress as I can’t figure out what special features my character has.

– XThe_GManX

 

I have never really chosen a species, I just “feel” it. It’s like looking inside, and seeing another side of oneself. I see a wolf, most of the time. It’s just there, I don’t choose.

– anonymous

 

I identify with my species through spirituality. Animal totemology.

– Toast

 

The species I wanted to be one from my home country (the US). I chose a raccoon because I think chubby raccoons are cute, and I wanted him to be a self-representational fursona and am chubby myself. They’re also easy to accessorize because of their coloration, and since I wanted him to be a Pokemon trainer I didn’t want it to be difficult to design his trainer outfit…there are some bizarre clothes in the Pokemon world.

– anonymous

 

I don’t actually recall anymore where the character of ‘Shakal’ originally came from. I have always had a strong affinity with felines. During college he became a complex mixture of both self-identity and self-idealization. In essence while being one of my strongest symbols for what I consider to be ‘me’, he also is an idea of what I want to be, a goal to push myself toward.

– Shakal Draconis

 

There was not really a choice. I felt drawn to wolves ever since I was a joung teenager. They were mentioned in a book I’ve read and immedeatly I recognised myself in those animals. I startet to devour every book about them I could get my hands on. So it was clear I would be a wolf. The other attributes… well I tried to depict my charakter as myself, only more… wolfisch. So he has a lot in common with me. And some things I discovered during my shamanic practises, like the fur pattern.

– Lutan

 

Don’t have a fursona.

 

Apperently it is very important to the furry fandom to have fursona.

– anonymous

 

Well, I started off as a generic wolf in Furcadia, but as I grew to identify more with the sub culture, I became a dragon, merely becuase I had a thing for reptiles. In time the dragon felt a little generic for me, and a little too majestic or strong. I was a person with weaknesses and flaws that needed to be reflected upon. One day while digging through IMVU i found a jackal skin and it just struck a chord in me. I tend to be loud, and annoying at times, possessing sharp tongue and mind. Jackals are seen as scavangers, which I tend to mooch sometimes, but trully keen hunters and can defend themselves from larger predators using witts. Highly undrestimated and ovrlooked.

– Iridon

 

I always liked wolves

– CS Silver

Some additional notes:

• Sample size is 368 at the time of writing
• The following terms were mentioned (partial match):
  • Totem – 2 times
  • Spirit – 6 times
  • Connect – 9 times
  • Represent – 21 times
  • Identify – 26 times
  • Personality – 43 times
• Some initial reactions:
  • Many referred to their character matching themselves physically or mentally
  • Many refer to their character in the third person (“He is…”, “My character does…”)
  • Character creation seems to be a pretty casual process, but a fluid and ongoing one
  • Furries are pretty casual writers, but pretty good ones overall
  • While character creation may be a casual process (‘pick’, ‘choose/chose’, and so on are used frequently), it’s still a fairly personal one, and there’s usually a reason behind the choice of species

Additional Notes

JM recently wrote about the concept of “priming” in surveys and how difficult it is to avoid.  One reader brought up a point about the concept of spirituality and how that might affect affinity with species.  I agree with him that there is often a spiritual sort of connection, however ill-defined, with the animal one associates with a character.  However, that question was not asked, and so it seems that we have a bit of a priming issue here on our hands. Due to the way the question was worded and the questions surrounding it (which are visible both in the electronic and paper versions of the survey), replies along that vein may have been minimized.  The upside is that the survey portion of the census and survey will change every year, while the census remains fairly consistent, and so this is a question we can elaborate on more in the 2013 [a][s] Census and Survey!

As a reminder, you can always get in touch with us by leaving comments, contacting us on Twitter/FA/Google+, or shooting us an email: submit@adjectivespecies.com!

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submitted by Hicarbut
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Personally, if no one objected to it, fuck yes. Since i was a kid, i hated how i look and myself in general (bullying got me to that point etc.) so i always wanted to be something stronger and better than me.

I feel better about myself now, but i still think the answer would be yes. I'd choose a wolf, hell maybe an anthro dragon :D. What animal, fictional or otherwise would you choose?

That doesn't mean im uncomfortable in my own skin, it's just that being an anthropomorphic animal sounds so badass >:D

submitted by Enleat
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All of the important stuff is in the title, so I'll just ramble on about rambling in the text box.

submitted by emofrappuccino
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submitted by culmor30
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“It’s the literary equivalent of buried treasure!” That’s more than just publisher’s hyperbole. It might just be the best description of The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories, published last fall in hardcover by Random House. For the first time it collects together 7 original stories by Dr. Seuss that have not seen the light of day since they were first published in magazines from 1948 to 1959. From Amazon: “Seuss scholar/collector Charles D. Cohen has hunted down seven rarely seen stories by Dr. Seuss. Originally published in magazines between 1948 and 1959, they include ‘The Bear, the Rabbit, and the Zinniga-Zanniga’ (about a rabbit who is saved from a bear with a single eyelash!); ‘Gustav the Goldfish’ (an early, rhymed version of the Beginner Book ‘A Fish Out of Water’); ‘Tadd and Todd’ (a tale passed down via photocopy to generations of twins); ‘Steak for Supper’ (about fantastic creatures who follow a boy home in anticipation of a steak dinner); ‘The Bippolo Seed’ (in which a scheming feline leads an innocent duck to make a bad decision); ‘The Strange Shirt Spot’ (the inspiration for the bathtub-ring scene in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back); and ‘The Great Henry McBride’ (about a boy whose far-flung career fantasies are only bested by those of the real Dr. Seuss himself). In an introduction to the collection, Cohen traces the history of these stories, which demonstrate an intentional and significant change that led to the writing style we associate with Dr. Seuss today. Cohen also explores these stories’ themes that recur in better-known Seuss stories (like the importance of the imagination, or the perils of greed). With a color palette that has been enhanced beyond the limitations of the original magazines in which they appeared, this is a collection of stories that no Seuss fan (whether scholar or second-grader) will want to miss!” It’s also available as an audio book CD with stories being read by the likes of Neil Patrick Harris, Anjelica Houston, Jason Lee, Joan Cusack, and more.

image c. 2011 Random House

submitted by blueyoshi11
[link] [6 comments]

A nice fun relaxing episode filled wi- RRRAAAGGGEEE -th Shroud coming back, some nice emails, an awesome interv- RRRAAAGGGEEE -iew with awesome comic writers, and last but not lea- RRRAAAGGGEEE -st Mattox experiences some “RRRAAAGGGEEE.” Then afterward we… Wait, what just happened?

Download MP3

News:

• Blotch’s Skyrim fan-art sells for $5500 at FC 2012 by GreenReaper
• ‘Xanth’ arrested over bestiality video by Higgs Raccoon
• Furrystyle completes move to Europe after YiffyToys buyout by Suran
• FeralHeart servers down until Tuesday over ‘rape’ dances by banrai
• Mixed-venue survey delineates furries, therians, otherkin by GreenReaper

Interviewee:

• DreamKeepers Graphic Novelest
• Website: http://www.dreamkeeperscomic.com/
• Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SXkC4vyTao

Watch Video E-mails:

• Amy Midnight – “The Loss of a Friend”
• Lumi Kuma – “Semi-depressed bear”
• Mangetsu – “My First Email”
• Mandy Fox – “Fursona Problems”

FC-70 Bapa Pear - A nice fun relaxing episode filled wi- RRRAAAGGGEEE -th Shroud coming back, some nice emails, an awesome interv- RRRAAAGGGEEE -iew with awesome comic writers, and last but not lea- RRRAAAGGGEEE -st Mattox experiences some "RRRAAAGGGEEE.

A nice fun relaxing episode filled wi- RRRAAAGGGEEE -th Shroud coming back, some nice emails, an awesome interv- RRRAAAGGGEEE -iew with awesome comic writers, and last but not lea- RRRAAAGGGEEE -st Mattox experiences some “RRRAAAGGGEEE.” Then afterward we… Wait, what just happened?

Download MP3

News:

• Blotch’s Skyrim fan-art sells for $5500 at FC 2012 by GreenReaper
• ‘Xanth’ arrested over bestiality video by Higgs Raccoon
• Furrystyle completes move to Europe after YiffyToys buyout by Suran
• FeralHeart servers down until Tuesday over ‘rape’ dances by banrai
• Mixed-venue survey delineates furries, therians, otherkin by GreenReaper

Interviewee:

• DreamKeepers Graphic Novelest
• Website: http://www.dreamkeeperscomic.com/
• Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SXkC4vyTao

Watch Video E-mails:

• Amy Midnight – “The Loss of a Friend”
• Lumi Kuma – “Semi-depressed bear”
• Mangetsu – “My First Email”
• Mandy Fox – “Fursona Problems”

FC-70 Bapa Pear - A nice fun relaxing episode filled wi- RRRAAAGGGEEE -th Shroud coming back, some nice emails, an awesome interv- RRRAAAGGGEEE -iew with awesome comic writers, and last but not lea- RRRAAAGGGEEE -st Mattox experiences some "RRRAAAGGGEEE.

A nice fun relaxing episode filled wi- RRRAAAGGGEEE -th Shroud coming back, some nice emails, an awesome interv- RRRAAAGGGEEE -iew with awesome comic writers, and last but not lea- RRRAAAGGGEEE -st Mattox experiences some “RRRAAAGGGEEE.” Then afterward we… Wait, what just happened?

.postlink:link { color: #ff9900; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; } .postlink:visited { color: #BB5500; } .postlink:hover { color: #ffBB00; } .postlink:active { color: #ffffff; }

Download MP3 (Right-click, Save)

News:

• Blotch’s Skyrim fan-art sells for $5500 at FC 2012 by GreenReaper

• ‘Xanth’ arrested over bestiality video by Higgs Raccoon

• Furrystyle completes move to Europe after YiffyToys buyout by Suran

• FeralHeart servers down until Tuesday over ‘rape’ dances by banrai

• Mixed-venue survey delineates furries, therians, otherkin by GreenReaper

 

Interviewee:

• DreamKeepers Graphic Novelest
• Website: http://www.dreamkeeperscomic.com/
• Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SXkC4vyTao

 

E-mails:

• Amy Midnight – “The Loss of a Friend”
• Lumi Kuma – “Semi-depressed bear”
• Mangetsu – “My First Email”
• Mandy Fox – “Fursona Problems”

FC-70 Bapa Pear - A nice fun relaxing episode filled wi- RRRAAAGGGEEE -th Shroud coming back, some nice emails, an awesome interv- RRRAAAGGGEEE -iew with awesome comic writers, and last but not lea- RRRAAAGGGEEE -st Mattox experiences some "RRRAAAGGGEEE.

submitted by r3drocket
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submitted by baracudaboy
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