Crush...Yiff...Destroy!

Anonymous · Coadjutor Joined: 01 Jun 2003 Posts: 767

It was rather innocuous, truly - I moved to California to work for a rather large ISP. Doing so, I had no place to stay. Checking around the woorkplace, I was offered rental of a room by a coworker, who was rather large, but otherwise, seemed quite, uh, normal. How was I to know?

Cut to the chase, I move into my room at the laultry fee of $650 a month, and am directly asked, only AFTER I move my few carloads of shit in, "What are your feelings on homosexuality?"

I answer in the affirmative, "I don't care; my stuff goes on in my life, you in yours." Lo, and behold, this was not the only instance.

Throughout my tenure at $ISP, I ended up diving deepr and eeper into personal torture, taking up drinking as first a hobby, then a lifestyle. Shortly thereafter, I get some GHB from a friend and start using it as a sleep aid, meanwhile my roommates are out in the living room cutting up rugs in the name of fursuit building.

Eventually, they have a house party, and all the the furs come out - from thin, ameciated faggots to rather fat and ugly folks stuffed into fursuits.

They come over to me and suggest this 'NEARLY IRC' service that has programmability. Thus, in the mid 1990s, is my entry to FurryMUCK.

Fuck you all.

Shmorky · Coadjutor Joined: 22 Nov 2003 Posts: 182

For me...

I had always drawn cartoon animals because they're fun and easy to do. You can get away with more wild expressions than you can with a human character. The internet introduced me to furries. All I had to do was ask that one dreadful question "so what exactly IS a furry?" I then found out all these fruity words like "yiff" and "scritch" and "furfart" (I made that last one up.)

From the start I swore never to (seriously) use the word furry or anything associated with it to describe my art... not because the stigma I didn't know about at the time, but because I thought those were stupid labels (RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE. HUR HURR HONK SQUELCH.) Gradually I was introduced to a sicker more disturbing part of furriness and I thought "I could make some money off of this." I got a Paypal account and started putting up auctions of the gayest furry porn crap I could imagine without vomiting. Then I started taking commissions. The requests got worse and worse and my sanity was starting to slip (more than it already had.) I tried convincing people to buy my clean stuff, but it was only picked up by hardcore fans for much less than my porn sold for. Earlier this year I just HAD it with porn. I quit doing stuff at orgymania.net, I trashed everything in VCL like an angry kid tearing posters off his wall, I refused to put up porny auctions, I refused to take commissions for anything with the slightest bit of nudity, I even quit drawing the goofy SMUT comic. I'm happier than healthier now than I have ever been.

This is the very simplified version of this story.

Furries are putrid fucks. I'm gonna' go SPIT now.

MagKnightX · Coadjutor Joined: 04 Dec 2003 Posts: 137

I started off by doing a few anthro sketches (just clean stuff), liked the style, heard of a community (HAH!) called "furry." Checked it out. On the surface, it seemed okay. I made a few friends on usenet and such. Then I found some of the yiff art. Okay, I thought, so some people use this as a porn medium. Big deal. Then, as I slowly looked at more websites, I realized that furry wasn't humanoid animals sometimes being used as porn, it was foxtaurs with seventeen breasts and thirteen-foot-long dicks and worse being used as a medium for clean-ish art once in a blue moon. I immediately distanced myself. I discovered the burned furs, and thought that maybe if some furries thought like this, there was hope for the fandom. Man, was I wrong! Turns out the burned furs died out years ago trying to do the impossible, and sucking at it. Then I vowed not to call myself furry again, and found this website, and that's about it. I, fortunately, have never met a blatant lifestyler in real life, have never been to a convention, never taken a commission, etc. I consider myself very lucky in that aspect.

Genghis · Coadjutor Joined: 01 Jun 2003 Posts: 186

I've drawn random cartoon animal things for years, just because, well, it's funny. Admittedly, I have always sucked at it, but that was never the point. In any case, given most of the other geekery going on in my life, I was your typical borderline case up until a couple of years ago - hell, if I'd discovered the sane parts of the fandom a couple of years ago I might have ended up being sucked in (at least until the point where things explode in a flurry of drama - I never was the most tactful person on the planet).

In any case, my first encounter with furries was on the SA forums, where I got a face-first encounter with the horrors of the fandom. I can think of nicer ways to find out about them, but hell, at least I was forewarned. If i'd run into Yerf before SA, who knows what might have happened...

Anonymous · Coadjutor Joined: 01 Jun 2003 Posts: 767

Smorky: I've seen your work on both furry and non-furry veins, and honestly, I don't attempt to quanify you. I've read some stuff as early as pre-outakufeh, and I find you quite amusing. Of course, some asshats would attempt to call PP Furry. I am not the aforementioned. ;)

MagKnightX: Sorry, I don't know you at all.

Genghis: I've chatted with you before on SA, and found your 'human porn' comic quite 'LOL'. I've forwarded it on to many furries whom I know that take the fandom too seriously.

I find myself amused, and somewhat entranced how everyone thus far has found their way into furry - it's akin to the first time one is found 'huffing paint' - only more detrimental.

Keep your noses clean, folks!

- R

Anonymous · Coadjutor Joined: 01 Jun 2003 Posts: 767

Needless to say, the second part...

After acclimating myself to the muck, I found it quite like a 'Zork' game, with all of the programmable areas, and found the people whom were animated quite a treat - beyodn the predefined 'steal, kill, hump' type of shit I've seen before.

I ended up creating a paper thin character on the muck, whick was accepted as 'one of the own', sticking around to learn MPI, and playing a bit with the patrons thereof.

My biggest disappointment was falling OOC, which made it quite easy for others oto do the samne - these 'misunderstood' guys who were geeky and incapable of expressing thmselves otherwise, even if they WERE pretending to be 23040234023042 foot female foxes.

Here it is at 2003, nearly 2004. Blargh. I give up on them, and the whole fandom. The entire concept of geekyRP in soem bullshit excuse to share one's perversions with another doesn't even intrigue me.

Peace, skunkfuckers, and even those sicko sizeplaying diaper wearers. ;)

The New Meat · Coadjutor Joined: 03 Jun 2003 Posts: 327

I've always loved comics and cartoons, whether about talking animals or not, and I always drawn crappy doodly comics. I only learned about furry as a high school senior; I wrote an entire article about my first introduction here on CYD. I didn't think much about it until about two years later when I started dating a girl who turned out to be a furry. Over our years together, she's sunk ever deeper into furry insanity and I've gone right down the tubes with her. Still, I love the crazy broad. (Especially if she's reading this right now.)

mouse · Coadjutor Joined: 13 Jul 2003 Posts: 662

Well, as it stands at this moment in time, theres only a few things left I want from furry

I like to think of myself as the fandom equivalent of Indiana Jones, except that I have to escape from creepy perverts instead of nazis, and I occassionally find myself in a pit of fucked up spooge pictures instead of snakes

but i came real close to finding furry fandom,
looting it ,
and being out - all in under a year, but unfortunatly thats not the case

I DID however find the 'ark of the covenant' last week , coincidentally completely outside the fandom - and it will be in the mail to my house, by friday , when my check gets direct deposited

and im paying WAY under list price (im talkin 80%-90% off here)

and from there, theres only 4 other items i really want, and they are going to be a hell of a lot harder to get (Kazaleh's 4 self-published zines)
And I'm sure all of them are in furry collections, i cant think of anyone else who would have them

Pycnopodia · Coadjutor Joined: 31 Dec 2003 Posts: 72

Fuck you to.
Maybe someone will feel sorry for you if you stop having childish prejudices.
Furries are no worse or better then other people.

DA · Coadjutor Joined: 06 Jun 2003 Posts: 320

Fuck you to.
Maybe someone will feel sorry for you if you stop having childish prejudices.
Furries are no worse or better then other people.

A: are you Pycnopodia from yerf? and didn't you keep getting topics locked for not following the rules?

B: have you seen some of the more fucked up ones? Yes furry's got plenty of normal sane people but it also seems to drag in the very dregs of society the ones no sane person would talk to, deal with or be in the same country with if they had a choice.

Heck some of them make me look non-disabled and I suffer from a variety of disabilitys, some of which are incredibly anti-social and some of which scare the bejesus out of people, I still manage to have a normal life and friends, I don't declare myself to be another creature because I can't deal with or respect myself.

Wayd Wolf · Coadjutor Joined: 06 Oct 2003 Posts: 456

I came to furry after several years of self-chosen exile from life in general, feeling like wanting to be dead, and not knowing what to do.

I'd revisited some old writing I'd done centered on a nanotechnological werewolf girl and a few days later went to the local state university library where I came across Usenet. Again. First time was a year earlier, but it was just porn I found then. This time in scanning through the group names, I noted "furry". alt.fan.furry.

I wrote some of the best stuff I've ever managed, was at my public funniest, when I was closest to suicide. I found some people who were very nice to me. Some are my friends to this day. I guess I was really fortunate to fall in with them and not the furverts and freaks.

As much fun as the sudden burst of creativity with the writing was, it wasn't ultimately keeping me from my appointment with Hell.

What did it was the essential roll of the dice that calling a dating service was. A family member insisted on me trying it. I wasn't under the impression I couldn't score or was a loser. I just didn't want to take a chance on losing anyone ever again and wasn't sure I had anything left in me for someone else. But I tried it.

Six years I've been married to the woman who did keep me ultimately from offing myself. And I did have more for someone else.

Furry was a stop-gap measure. A dalliance with a spectacle in the distance before stepping off the dam into the drop. Anthropomorphics is an interest no doubt. I was writing about furry creatures a long time before alt.fan.furry intersected my life. I still will. But it wasn't some magical thing. It has a number of worthwhile people, and some who I'd take a bullet for. But it's not something that on the whole I take as a positive experience beyond reconfirming something I new from my passes through Trekdom: there's some totally fucked up people out there and a load of similar dysfunctionals just waiting to take advantage of them.

I am SOOOOO glad I wasn't one of the led astray. I was erroneously absent in judgement regarding the difference between being open minded and my brains falling out, between peace and peace at all costs. Some costs are just too high.

Pycnopodia · Coadjutor Joined: 31 Dec 2003 Posts: 72

Fuck you to.
Maybe someone will feel sorry for you if you stop having childish prejudices.
Furries are no worse or better then other people.

A: are you Pycnopodia from yerf? and didn't you keep getting topics locked for not following the rules?

B: have you seen some of the more fucked up ones? Yes furry's got plenty of normal sane people but it also seems to drag in the very dregs of society the ones no sane person would talk to, deal with or be in the same country with if they had a choice.

Heck some of them make me look non-disabled and I suffer from a variety of disabilitys, some of which are incredibly anti-social and some of which scare the bejesus out of people, I still manage to have a normal life and friends, I don't declare myself to be another creature because I can't deal with or respect myself.

Hi,
I am also registered on the Yerf forums. And yes, some of my first posts was locked.
I have yet to meet a furry. I probably wont meet one for at least a few months until the norwegian online-furry community gets bigger.
I dont really care if there is alot of fucked up furries, there are lots and lots of fucked up fotballplayers to, it doesnt mean anything.
Its good you can have a normal life even though you suffer from disabilitys.

DA · Coadjutor Joined: 06 Jun 2003 Posts: 320

Hun, fucked up footballers have not harassed me, almost driven me to suicide. Fucked up footballers don't get me accused of being a perv because I choose to draw a vixen morph, Fucked up footballers don't send me emails full of the skin crawling details that they want me to draw. They don't abuse me behind my back, so I'd settle for fucked up footballers any day of the week.

Pycnopodia · Coadjutor Joined: 31 Dec 2003 Posts: 72

Hun, fucked up footballers have not harassed me, almost driven me to suicide. Fucked up footballers don't get me accused of being a perv because I choose to draw a vixen morph, Fucked up footballers don't send me emails full of the skin crawling details that they want me to draw. They don't abuse me behind my back, so I'd settle for fucked up footballers any day of the week.

Oh, I feel sorry for you. Maybe furries are more fucked up after all :/

Anonymous · Coadjutor Joined: 01 Jun 2003 Posts: 767

I first encountered furry as a specific format when I met someone with the Albedo RPG, and found it rather interesting aestheticaly and as a world. That led to the comic, which led to others, and so on. When the Internet arrived in force, searches led to the alt.fan.furry group, and various FTP and web sites.

I never really got involved with the fandom though. I'm not an artist myself, and there just didn't seem to be enough common ground to really relate to other people just because of the art and stories, so I've been content to just sit back and enjoy the works.

And read stuff like this site. :) I may not participate in the fandom, but there's that traffic-accident lure to watching all of the drama and whining and freakish behaviour that goes on in it...

DA · Coadjutor Joined: 06 Jun 2003 Posts: 320

Hun, fucked up footballers have not harassed me, almost driven me to suicide. Fucked up footballers don't get me accused of being a perv because I choose to draw a vixen morph, Fucked up footballers don't send me emails full of the skin crawling details that they want me to draw. They don't abuse me behind my back, so I'd settle for fucked up footballers any day of the week.

Oh, I feel sorry for you. Maybe furries are more fucked up after all :/

you got that right, but it's only fringe elements, I get on with most furries but some just squick me out :P

Anonymous · Coadjutor Joined: 01 Jun 2003 Posts: 767

Sci Fi/Fantasy
Back about '85.
I had just picked up the latest issue of Elfquest and the store owner
pointed out Albedo. Neat story neat art. Then Critters, Xanadu, Space Ark.
Furrlough, other titles.
The first of the internet News groups, including the binary art furry groups.
Now at this point, I am rather on the fringes of the fandom so to speak.
Responsiblities come first, and "The Con" is too far away.
Then I get the first couple of "Furry Catalogues", and saw some Gallery's
Somebody was in for a shock..
Then I begin to catch wind of the really freaky stuff, some of it definitely sick
like the puppy plookers, the "Ped" stuff and watched Furry Notables blow it
off.
I also began to have my first run-in's with the Masters of Furry Business
Administration graduates and the all too common attitude of some of the
long established Furs that society's rules don't apply.
That is quite serious, an all too common notion that Furry lives apart and
can exist outside of the rest of Society.
Well, maybe Furry doesn't live on this planet, but I sure do.
Ole Sparky

Sulaco · Rasophore Joined: 28 Oct 2003 Posts: 61

I think I was 15 at the time. Four years ago. My only experience on the internet was that of countless hours of Myth: the Fallen Lords online. Recently I had rediscovered our old VHS of the Secret of NIMH, watched it, and remembered how much I loved it as a kid. So I thought "Hey, maybe there's cool stuff about it on the World Wide Web, or 'net' as they call it!"

I was so, so, so naive.

You can take a few wild guesses on what sort of horror awaited me. I didn't know this was the product of furry fandom, though. So the true face of the enemy was yet to be revealed. About a year and a half later when I started drawing I found Yerf through a link at Elfwood. Yerf, as we all know, is nice and clean, give or take a few freakjobs that managed to get in in its early days.

Then I dared to dig a little deeper and found VCL. At that point I quit going any further. Whatever link I have to furry now is probably through my Yerf gallery and frequent activity in its forums, aside from my trolling runs here and there on less respectable furry arenas.

m_estrugo · Coadjutor Joined: 13 Nov 2003 Posts: 160

I always have drawn cute funny animals. I think I was influenced by the zillions of re-runs of Hanna-Barbera cartoon shows I saw during my childhood... Tom & Jerry, Kimba the White Lion, Quick-Draw McCloud (sp?), Pixie & Dixie, Pink Panther, Bugs Bunny... The list is very long

I loved all those shows and ever since I was a little kid, I wanted to make characters like that and make comics and cartoons featuring them. Oddly enough, I liked funny animals better than people when I drew as they were more attractive aesthetically to me. Up to certain point, that's normal for a kid.

I continued drawing my little cute animals while I grew older and most of my friends thought they were "stuff for little kids". However, I still had a little readership between my friends and drew more and more comics.

When I went to college, I had stopped drawing comics, though, simply because I had moved away and those people who liked my stuff were in another country. However, I used them ocassionally to illustrate the works and the stuff I had to do on my "Mass Communication" career (AKA Journalism/advertising and all that stuff), but didn't draw any long stuff as I thought my new companions wouldn't be interested on them.

However, when Internet was introduced in my university, in mid 1995, I joined a team to design and keep the university's website. I designed their webpage and had the immense luck of being paiod to "keep the website" and navigate thru the internet "searching for useful resources". Heee.

And, in one of these searches, I found the old avatar.snc.edu FTP website. Thus I found furry fandom. And I enthusiastically joined it, as I thought I finally have found an audience for my funny animals.

Back in 1995, furry art was much more different than it is now. Cartoony stuff, like the one I draw, was much more appreciated than it is now and people didn't take furry art so seriously. Of course, there was porn and the stuff by then already, but in a much smaller proportion. And there was a bigger proportion of talented artists, like Bob Guthrie, Taral Wayne, Craig Carrington, Daphne Lage, and many others were active and on the heyday of their popularity within furry fandom. Furry fandom was a much more attractive place to be.

It has changed much since then.

Chris Baird · Coadjutor Joined: 04 Aug 2003 Posts: 78

Daphne Lage

Hmm.... I consider her as actually one of the first talented artists to unashamedly sell out to the yiff market...

m_estrugo · Coadjutor Joined: 13 Nov 2003 Posts: 160

Daphne Lage

Hmm.... I consider her as actually one of the first talented artists to unashamedly sell out to the yiff market...

Yes. And that was a step she did regret: Read her farewell post on AFF.

I went into furry fandom with the intention of sharing my art and creations only to feel trapped and suffocated by a sordid reputation I made the mistake of nurturing. Instead of following my heart's desire, I chose to run after the fickle amusements of a vocal, wealthier minority. Not only did my soul suffer from the consequences, I feel the fandom has as well. Instead of receiving my best, it received what I could get away with, the lowest brow art I churned out with tiring mediocrity.

SLaitila · Coadjutor Joined: 03 Jun 2003 Posts: 126

I just try to forget.

Anonymous · Coadjutor Joined: 01 Jun 2003 Posts: 767

wow.........You lot really havent had a good time with the whole furry thing have you?

the term 'furry' is only a word i use on the net, and ive never in my whole life heard anyone say it offline. Expect those stupid MTV 'gay fur-suiting murderer' reports.

Well ive just been drawing anthros since I was four years old, and I still like to create characters to this very day. I feel that while my art has got better since being on the net for the past two years, it sure aint that original. Its hard to think of something that hasn't been done thses days, but I'll find my path someday I reckon. haven't really had any bad times with the furry community, but maybe thats because I dont draw too much 'yiff' art or do trades or requests.

Zepper · Qualificator Joined: 29 Dec 2003 Posts: 22

I have always loved cute characters myself, so I don't feel I was ever formally introduced to furry.

Funny that Sulaco mentioned NIMH. My mom took us to see that when I was four and the movie scared the CRAP out of me. It was so dark and spooky. I can appreciate it more as an adult now :-) I love comics and graphic novels too. Things like Charming Tails, Peter Rabbit and Calico Critters I find so adorable. I also stick mainly to Yerf and other clean, well-lighted places. I don't really consider myself a furry, just a hanger on of the locals...it's nice to be able to talk about comics, cartoons and stuff like that with others who appreciate it. Not everyone who likes anthropomorphic art is a furry, after all.