Greetz

[Thunderpaw]

Hello and greetings to all who might see this.

I'm Thunderpaw, a jaguar who has seen some things. My name comes from playing my drum.
I'm here because I've seen some things, and I'd like to meet more folks who have seen some things. I don't like to make assumptions about the things I've seen, because my upbringing says I shouldn't be seeing these things in the first place. But I think I've seen these things because I stopped having assumptions about things in the first place.

More specifically about my background, and maybe something you might not have known..
So I'm what a lot of folks would call a "Furry", however I'm a relic from a time when that description meant something a bit different than what you see in the mainstream. When I "joined up", what became the fandom was two different groups: Furry Fans, and Furry Lifestylers. The Furry Lifestylers included many people who experienced the feeling of having an animal side to themselves, being stuck in the wrong body, or even awareness of animal spirits/spirit guides being part of themselves or their lives. Over time, these folks kind of got laughed out of the fandom at large when a lot of new folks showed up (after seeing what they thought furries were on TV and whatever) and kind of got quiet. Many of them consider themselves to be therian, and have separated into their own community for the most part. I guess you could consider me to be part of that specific group of therians, although I am not part of any official community these days. I just kind of wander between places...

I have always 'seen/known some things' since birth, but as I've grown, that list also grows. I have had a lot of experiences that people would swear are just fairytales or mythology or made up, or mental illness or whatever. I have a feeling I can speak freely here.
I grew up in a conservative Christian household, and still hold my beliefs, but I feel like I was brought up in cult-like situations. My experiences with what some may consider otherworldly events helped me to see that.

I have some stories that I have never written out, but would be happy to archive on this forum.
I welcome any questions, comments--anything.

I hope to learn and grow with you. Thank you for your open-mindedness and understanding. I will extend the same courtesy, even if you might say something I don't personally agree with. I will always listen and consider everyone's points of view.

[golly]

Welcome! So glad you are here! I would like to tell my stories about weird things too. Sorry to hear about the culty things. Those stories can be so disturbing. Because I think there may be a correlation between cult-like behavior and some of our government or shadow-government gangs.

I hung out with some people who identified as Furries (I think) when I was about 18 and trying to find stuff to do in art class, and I have no idea where they land in any Furry schism. But I remember many of them were Star Trek fans. When I started drawing that stuff, my art teacher seemed vaguely disappointed in me, which only encouraged me to find out more about what the phenomenon truly is. I still don't know. In my imagination it's somewhere between fandom and spirituality and cosplay and performance. Yet, it would be great to hear more about it from someone who knows those who identify with the culture.

I like drawing stuff that's considered weird, and not merely because it's considered weird.

[Thunderpaw]

Literally, to be a "furry" you just have to say that you are. By definition it's a fictional animal that has been anthropomorphized in some way, OR someone who is a fan of such things. A lot of people think it's something else, but that is what it is. You can take that concept as far as you want. Some people take it pretty far. It doesn't have anything to do with sex, but if you want it to, it can. It used to be that less than 10% of furries even had any kind of a costume. Lots of folks didn't even have a "fursona". But because TV and people making jokes online say there's a fandom of people bonking in costumes, people started showing up like "whoa, point me to the plush orgies". So the whole dynamic changed. (To be fair a lot of people left when they found out it was just a bunch of D&D nerds with animal characters roleplaying)

[golly]

That's very enlightening, cheers. What should people know about what a "fursona" is?

[golly]

This seems really specific to history of the 1970s and 1980s, which sounds helpful!

As the customers [of fursona creators] were often not writers or artists but had envisioned these characters as being more than just under their ownership, detailed specifics for such characters (see "Elements") were often provided by the customers so as to give as much narrative-independent life to such characters as possible.

As a result, when the first furry parties were held, the first costumers and RPers of what would become the furry fandom had already developed the awareness of their favorite RP or costume characters' artistically-rendered exteriors, what they acted like, and in what they were interested or disinterested.

Such characters often did not need to be written into written narratives, but were instead buoyed by being a general-purpose alter-ego for the RPer or costumer. This difference from the traditional idea of the character as being driven by stories of fiction allowed for the "favorite character" or "custom-made character" to be shifted to the "alter-ego", "alternative persona" or "fursona".

( https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Fursona )

Thanks for telling me this term even exists! Not sure if your terms differ, but maybe it turns out I was into drawing "fursonas" and I didn't realize it. At 18, I was looking to copy everything furry and use them in a serious linear fantasy narrative with deep meaning, or make satire, parody and mock popular/dominant culture. It felt like rebellion, and repurposing with purpose. And also because the people I met in it had an iconoclastic attitude in that vein, and I didn't want to just let these narrative-rich characters just sit around.

And because they are so fun to draw and often also have a very sympathetic appearance, I thought I should try to do more than just copy what others were doing (though I certainly tried!). So rather than a basis of interactive fursona for RPGs, which was a whole other culture mysterious to me (until my 20s and I was invited to sit in for a D&D character) I made them to copy other people's styles with no real back story. (I copied a lot of newspaper strips to learn how to draw limbs and such, and cartoon animals were, I am sorry to say, easier than realistic humans as well. I was lazy about learning human(oid) faces.)

Anyway, it's funny that I didn't even think so but my main fiction piece I am working on now features "fursonas", though when writing, I was thinking of them more as a kind of specific shapeshifting being native to the story's world rather than being specifically open for roleplay.