My two cents on some Furry themes
What follows in a series of properly adjusted extracts from my diary,
dealing with my point of view on some themes and issues strictly related
to the concept of Furry (in terms of stories and artwork). Please keep
in mind that all the ideas expressed here reflect only my personal point
of view and are absolutely not an attempt to create a manifesto of
sort, nor to represent the ideas of the furry fandom as a whole.
February the 4th 2001
This is actually a list and it's quite too late to finish it all today,
I'll be back on it in the next few days and maybe, if possible, treat it
as a true short essay upon those issues. That's going to be a short overview
on issues which, let it be clear, are not an attempt to define "furry"
in general, but rather issues which the furry cannot allow itself to
ignore, essential matters which are direct consequence of a vision
of anthropomorphics both "realistic" and open to new ideas. Perhaps I'm
misusing the word "realistic" here as after all I'm dealing with fantasy
stuff: when I write of "realistic" in this text, I rather mean "respectful
of the animal's ethology and logically correct", which would be pretty
long to repeat each time. :-) Many themes then are very strictly related
to each other and not easily parted. In short, it's a reflection which
I've attempted to break down in a scheme as I could, without any pretence
to make a rule or a manifesto of it, but only to give some cues and ideas
to those who are like me involved with the creative side of the fandom.
1) Perception and different senses
The first and most obvious issue to me. Humans do not have absolute priorities
for what concerns senses, though it's evident that with our evolution some
have gained a prominent role over the others - as for example sight is
more developed than smell. This fact, along with similar others, is easily
took for granted at the time of describing what a character does and how
it interacts with the surrounding world, and in the case of humans that's
logical - but it cannot be so for furries! In literature, the description
of an item or person is at times done basing on a less common sense, like
smell for example, but likely a great majority of the works written so
far in history would seem senseless if red (and how??) by someone from
a species which does not possess the sense of sight - essential
anyway in almost all human descriptions and actions - and has radically
different and much more "abstract" ideas of concepts like light/shadow,
colour, visibility of an item. A bat (1) can be a good
example of this: they are nearly blind and do "see" the environment by
sounds, getting a perception of it much different from ours, hard (and
thus interesting) to imagine and describe. Even a society of canines where
smell has an essential role for all individuals in identifying places,
items or people would be different from our by many details, even if not
evident at first sight. Imagining in realistic and reasonable terms
how this different perception is dealt with and which consequences it has
could be one of the most suggestive themes, and a field fully open to individual
creativity.
2) Physical appearance has an evident importance in the field of furry,
still I guess there are a few things to point out. So far, the only sort-of
universally accepted definition of furry is "something which deals with
anthropomorphic animals", and this has a wide range of interpretations.
In general, I prefer realistic or semirealistic furries to very stylized
ones, simply for IMHO the first are more apt to express realistically themes
and details like those I'm describing. Each animal has after all a very
specific physical form which would raise a lot of practical matters - just
think of the fur alone, which is present in most cases. Then why not
exploit this! Even erotic pictures playfully focused on anatomical differences
between species are an all but silly creative use of a furry's physical
aspect. This issue is strictly bound with the next one...
3) Technology and daily life
Possibly the most delicate issue. The concept's easy: a furry is fully
showing his potential only if what it does cannot leave apart its being
an animal, and would become senseless if the same thing would be done by
a human. Of course this is a limit concept, an ideal, extremely hard
to fulfill. But this is no excuse to reduce the concept of furry to the
use of characters with only a tail and ears distinguishing them from humans,
and
who behave as if they wouldn't even have them. To give a furry a mind
similar to the human one can be a choice functional to a story or to an
author's preference, but practical matters are way too relevant, they cannot
be ignored. A furry's physical characters would have endless effects
on its daily life! The clothing, the chairs, the vehicles, the dishes,
the food... How would a dog drink from a glass? How would be done a fox's
chair not to hamper the tail? Which door would have a deer's house so that
the horns do not get struck? How often would an anthropomorphic have a
bath, and would it have baths at all if its main sense would be smell?
Those are question which cannot be ignored if the goal's to create a furry
work able to touch for its creativity, and they'd have an effect
even on the simplest of drawings, making sensibly better of it.
4) Reasoning parameters
"On friday evening, when I return home from work, I'm very tired".
This phrase is likely familiar to us all in some way, or at least it's
easily understood by whoever reads it. But, well... this does not mean
it would be the same for a furry. Such a simple phrase already exposes
a lot of concepts which are all but universal, almost each word does. "Friday"
being the most obvious, as it assumes a calendar equal to our, and a mean
of measuring time based on the same criteria. "Evening" assumes an analogue
orbit of the planet around its star, and perhaps also a non-polar latitude.
"Return home" assumes that the concept of home exists as a place
where one returns often having it as a beacon, that it's always the same,
and in this phrase also that it's more pleasant than the working place.
"Work" assumes that there is a concept of work distinct from that of free
time, that the civilization we're dealing with requires working (but we
don't get to know why), and in this phrase that it's less pleasant than
free time, that it takes place far from home and always in the same place,
which means there is a concept of duty and principles of social interaction.
"Tired" assumes that there is a concept of tiredness (Physical? Mental?
We don't get to know), in the phrase also that it's consequence of working,
and thus that the principle of cause and effect is understood, and it's
just hinted here that it's no permanent status and it's soothed staying
at home. An finally we're assuming that whoever reads the phrase communicates
by words formed by letters and disposed in phrases... well, of course that's
a quite extreme example. :-) But, I hope the concept is clear. There
are beacon points in the human mind which must be necessarily set aside
in order to render a furry's life realistically, for they can be not compatible
with its most essential instincts. For way too much time TV, books
and comics have palmed off animals that had no more of an animal's appearance
(at the best), and besides of that reasoned exactly like humans, and when
they did like animals they went almost always by the most worn commonplaces
and poor knowledge of the animal. Furry means experimenting in the first
place, everybody receives a natural drive at creating and developing
its
own ideal concept of furry, before surrendering and being content with
that of somebody else. Studying and imagining different forms of thought
is one of the greatest innovations introduced by the furry movement, and
also the one with the greatest (and sadly less explored) potentials.
5) Evolution of instincts
A tiger's instincts are much different from those of humans. For example,
it's not a social animal like the humans' ancestors were. It's a carnivore,
not an omnivore. It's in general less curious and more cautious, and less
hyperactive. Now, what might bring to the conclusion that tigers would
evolve into a feudal/militaristic society (based on the dead worn Clans)
much like the human ones of the past? The link ferocity - love for for
war cannot be so simple, being instead a tiger's ferocity much more focused
on the prey than on its kindred. The link majesty - feudalism is simply
absurd, as a feudal society can only be built upon a strong sense of family
and social aggregation and upon acceptance of hierarchies, which a tiger
couldn't find at all as natural as most humans do. The example this time
is very simple but meaningful: nearly all tigerish civilizations I've red
about so far are strangely built on that structure. Of course reason (human
reason) might suggest that such a society has its advantages, but how?
Why? Which would be the consequences? Curious rituals or a fancy style
or a complicated religion are not enough to make an imaginary civilization
original
and realistic. Beautiful maybe, but never original. And
IMHO what furry needs to take its place as a movement worthy being remembered
is not beauty, but originality - it needs to bring something
new, in order to prove it's no silly child's play. An answer to the
questions above, even brief, even questionable, would be anyway
a good reason to write a story, and would be appreciated for sure by those
who appreciate this kind of issues. And this is another field where furry
has a huge potential mostly not exploited.
6) Level of rationality
We're thinking anthropomorphic animals and so far I assumed we're thinking
of rational ones. But this can be questioned too of course, for not only,
as said, a furry might have a different concept of "rationality", but
it might not have one at all! Ethology has led to the discovery of
many different types of intelligence, and of capabilities which have different
levels of refining. A dog is usually easier to train than a cat, while
a cat is more likely to survive if left alone in an hostile and unknown
environment. A furry thought of as an evolved animal might have an anthropomorphic
body but not a rational mind, it could be in brief a more intelligent
version
of the real animal, by the widest meaning of the word "intelligence".
It could hunt better, communicate better, take better advantage of its
vital environment, without being actually rational to the human
standard. It would be anthropomorphic still - this is furry too, this is
exploration of new concepts and thorough examination of known ones too.
7) Interaction between different species
So far I dealt with portraying a single species, but why focus on a single
one? :-) In our reality, humans have no other species with their same rationality
with which they can communicate well, while often we find drawings or stories
where furries of many different species interact. But how it is possible
for totally different species to interact, as often we see, in a fully
transparent way as citizens of the same state, neighbours, even members
of a same family, or on the other end, as citizens of enemy states?
This makes no sense. It ends up as a mere display of poor comprehension
of the history mechanics - looking at the history of humanity, any genocide
war ended either with the fulfilment of the genocide, or with a radical
change of the initial condition, and on the other side we all see that
perfect integration is impossible even between groups of creatures with
the same instincts. An again, there is only one solution: questioning,
wondering how different species would choose to live together and why,
which "dark sides" and advantages would bring living together, what consequences
would it have on the cultural, religious, practical side, how would laws
work, how carnivore and herbivore would get to coexist, which differences
there would be from the cases we see happen among humans. And if it must
be war, all implication should be examined, and much before the practical
ones (which IMHO are by far the less interesting in this case) so should
be the social and psychological ones. That of interaction between different
furry species is one of the fields I'm most interested in, and that at
which my research is aimed.
8) The interaction between furries and humans is another essential theme
It is there that furry crosses over fantasy and science fiction, but also
in some cases with other genres like that of fairy tales. Actually the
relation between furries and humans can be a very complex issue if well
managed with an eye to the problems it raises, caring of all details
- especially in settings where furries and humans are independent from
each other, different species which exist independently. Much, much more
attention is required in a setting where they are not independent.
An example on a "classical" situation. What would happen if one of those
days, with all the religions existing on Earth, the good or bad relations
between the different cultures, the world's economical order, we would
discover suddenly that not only there is life on other worlds, but that
we have been created by an alien civilization with genetic engineering
from some odd animal of their world? I think this is not too hard to imagine.
The implications of such a discovery would be enough to wipe away all the
certainties of humanity, to delete all religions, to make a good
part of the events in our history meaningless. and then? What would happen?
Would we accept to live in peace on our creators' side, knowing we are
intrinsically inferior? It would be so easy for all humans to accept
the idea and go on living like nothing happened? But what could we do then,
as our world order would have likely collapsed, and they'd likely have
all means to keep under control an experiment which begins to give problems?
But, most important of all, why when this situation applies to furries,
all these problems are ignored? The "Furry Liberation" theme, meant
as rebellion against the human creators, is still very popular. But how
many have examined carefully the psychology of a species as it passes through
a similar experience, the sudden discovery that it has been created
by another one and the need to find a new way a bit more credible than
a total war? Some authors have handled well this kind of social furry
themes, describing in their stories credible interactions between bio-engineered
furries and their creators (Bernard Doove (2) being
one of the most evident examples), but the implications of the human-furry
relation, whatever the origins of the two species are, still has many facets
not revealed...
I'll stop here for now. Much more could be written about how many
and which themes are perfectly fitting for the tools and potentials, IMHO
still mostly unexplored, of the furry movement; but as I wrote this is
a collection of notes and not an exhaustive essay, so for now I'll just
stop here. I'm not pretending that all I've written is true and fully agreeable,
in fact constructive criticism is welcome and appreciated: I hope anyway
I've introduced some point of reflection for those interested in bringing
their contribution to the furry movement. Nor I'm pretending I've said
all new things, as most of my opinions on those issues has formed by reading
messages and discussions on newsgroups and forums, or works by various
authors. There is a continuous need for new sap, new ideas, experimentation,
originality, and they've never been impossible things to find and develop.
I could sum up all opinions expressed above by saying that the first step
is always asking oneself, whatever the work, whatever the imagined situation,
a simple question, but an inexorable one, which always needs
an answer or at least an attempt to answer: Why?
Scale
(1) - I was thinking of the story "Graduation Day"
by Phil Geusz, which I had just red:
http://transform.to/~ravenb/grad.html
(2) - Furry artist and writer; here the reference
is to the Chakats race invented by him:
http://www.furry.org.au/chakat/
This text is pubblic domain, but please do not alter!
E-mail: rangifer@mailhaven.com
Homepage: http://www.furholt.net/~scale
FurryITA, il portale furry italiano: http://www.tigress.com/furryita/