Fur and Loathing on VCL Forum

By C. Elliot Ritter

This began as a post on VCL Forum titled, Why are there so many people out there who despise anthro? I’ll repeat the previous posts here so you’ll get the full context and I will update this inline as the thread progresses to keep people reading this posted historically. I do apologize to people who like the other “Fur and Loathing” stuff because I draw from the other ones. I’ll also mention yet again that the title for this series come from Hunter S. Thompson’s series of books and essays and not from that goddamn CSI episode. They don’t know shit about Dr. Thomposn’s work.

My response that I didn’t post, but referenced, do to Ch’marr’s rules of conduct:

Unless the characters are presented well, as in their existence well explained, then it’s simply seen as silly. Animal people. It’s kid’s stuff. Grow up. Get over it. It’s creepy.

However there are the people, like those reading this most likely, who don’t see it as such and take it very seriously. (I think even too seriously at times.) But they’re a tiny minority. The market is tiny for it and stuff like it doesn’t sell. I bought 14 issues of “Omaha” the Cat Dancer for $0.50 an issue because the comic store couldn’t sell them for any higher. Most of the back issue Furry comics I’ve bought locally have been $2 or less. And other than children’s stuff they don’t make movies or cartoons involving them without vilifying them or making them comedic, which of course leads back to being kid’s stuff.

What does that have to do with acceptance of the “genre”. For one thing is it really a genre ready for mass acceptance? To the general public anthropomorphic animals are just that, animals. Despite the obvious sexual connotations given to characters such as the Warner Brothers’ Lola Bunny and Minerva Mink they’re still seen as animals. So to sexualized them screams of bestiality or watching animals humping.

Consider the mainstream point of view of the audience for it — there are a group of people, many of the adults, who not only have a peternatural attraction to anthropomorphic animals, they often even have a sexual attraction to them as well. People fear and loathe that idea. It’s too out of the mainstream. It’s gonzo. They’re out there, but do we really want to cater to them? It’s taboo. Witchcraft is more acceptable today than a lot of that.

Now that I’ve officially written flame bait, let me counter it.

I doubt it’s mass media’s fault. Most people, a vast majority, have never heard of a subculture called “Furries”. True, what’s out there isn’t good, but you have to remember that mass media is money driven. (I aced a final essay exam in Intro to Mass Media class about that subject specifically.) There’s a tongue-in-cheek newsroom saying of “if it bleeds it leads”. I was told specifically in Newspaper Editing class by an editor from the Louisville Courier-Journal that if you can get “sex” into a headline then do it. Why? Because it sells! So when you take that into account why would you put a truly balanced story about “Furries” into your newspaper or TV show or magazine or whatnot? It won’t sell! Like Don Henley said, “Give us dirty laundry.” Make them look like freaks! You’ll sell more advertising that way. Midwest FurFest’s website specifically says, “The press is not welcome at Midwest FurFest.” for that exact reason. The best you can hope for is making them look like harmless freaks. (That last part’s not my quote! I heard it from someone working there in 2004.)

So if no one has heard of them why is there a fear and loathing of it? Look near the top of this. It’s creepy. It’s kid’s stuff. They should grow up get over it. It’s not an active thing. There’s no one burning “Furries” at the stake! There’s no desire to either. It’s that it’s not considered a serious thing from their point of view. Why do people “despise” Furries? They’re silly! Furries have sexualized and taken way too seriously what most people see as kid’s stuff.

But let’s take a thing from another, similar idea. I’m writing a serious novel about fairies living in modern day Louisville, Ky. I came up with the answer to a big question in the story, why are some fairies discriminated against? Well, in Irish lore the Tuatha dé Danann — a magical race who lived in Ireland — fought a war again the Sons of Mil who were the Ghodelic Celts for Eire. (In fact the name Erie and the literary name Banba both come from names of Tuatha dé women who came to the Celts talking about a truce.) What was the truce? The Sons of Mil were so impressed that they allowed the Tuatha dé to stay on Eire, but to live underground. Eventually the Tuatha dé became known as Sidhe which translates from Gaelic as “fairy”. Those who didn’t agree to that went west to Tir Na Nog. Well… west of Ireland is, roughly, Nova Scotia. So they came to North American — thinking it was their Land of Eternal Youth and decided to spread out and populate their new land and lived peacefully alongside the native population. (In my story the White Buffalo Woman was Sidhe.) So they came here get away from mortal humans and suddenly, a couple thousand years later, which is sudden when you’re nearly immortal, they start pouring into their new land. The fairies who came over along with the humans, weren’t well accepted by the now native-born Tuatha dé, thus the discrimination.

Where am I going with that? I told that idea to my parents and my mother said something like, “For god’s sake Colin you’re a 27 year old man talking about fairies!” It doesn’t matter that actually I believe in them. Don’t laugh! There’s a lot of people who worship fairies specifically. I actually worship Celtic gods and goddesses that are directly connected to them. There people in Ireland today who leave milk out for “the little people” and they won’t do archaeological digs in what are possibly burial mounds there because they are traditionally fairy hills and they don’t want to upset them just in case. (I didn’t tell my mother any of that though!)

Now, am I distraught that my mother doesn’t accept that I take fairies seriously? No. The other day my father came over and I mentioned a band called Cat Power and he asked if it was “Anamorphic”. I didn’t correct his mistake, but I said no. His response was “Good, that stuff’s just creepy.” Now what he’s seen of it came from various naked Furry pictures in my room that they found and a rotation of several hundred computer wallpapers with Furries in various states of dress. Now my parent’s are about as accepting as they come. They knew about my whole crush on Gadget from the Rescue Rangers in middle school from the get go and never said a thing. Now as an adult they don’t admonish me for any of that. I’d never let them read about my Susanne, but that’s because she’s actually too personal to me. I’d rather not get into that discussion with them about why I’ve spent so much on my energy creating an “anamorphic” fox woman.

Now it’s 4 a.m. and I’m yet to completely wrap this whole thing up so I’ll just do a summary conclusion. Do I think it’s the mass media, no. I think it’s that the whole concept of Furries is generally seen as a silly, childish and usually even creepy and if you just make them exist for the sake of existing in a story then that’s the response you get. If you work them into a story carefully, with a lot of explanation of why they’re there and what they are and why they look like that, then it makes it better. Heaven forbid you sexualized it though. Why is there no content out there this is specifically Furry-friendly? There’s no market and the media runs on money. That’s not to say there isn’t, it’s just few and far between and usually not that well made, with notable exceptions.

So why are there so many people out there who despise anthro? Because it’s an easy target. Because it’s not well accept and I doubt unless they came to really exist they’d ever be accepted and even then. Because — as I’ve said many times so far and I will again — it’s silly and creepy and kids stuff and people who take it seriously are too weird for words.

And like the last few of these I’ve written if you’d like to tell me what you think (and don’t want to just write a flame post on VCL Forum) you can contact me by any of my various contact methods in the “About-C-Elliot-Ritter” in my root directory on VCL. Like I’ve said before too, I will append them to this document as a matter of record, as well as other posts to the thread in question as I’ve said before as well, and may rebut them at will.