"On the Furry Community"

Video script for Writing and Research final project.

This piece was written as the framework for a final assignment focused on the research and analysis of a certain community. This research included interviews and surveys of the given community. My personal research was based around surveys on web forums and an interview with a professor from New York state. Due to the nature of this kind of writing, this script may be a bit cumbersome to read. The final video can be viewed here, to see a more finalized version of this test.

On Furry Community Script: Quote

(Note, this was written to be a script for me personally and to be shared with classmates for feedback. Directions in bold are for me as I was recording the script.)

Pop into frame

Hey there everyone! So, today I have something rather interesting and semi-obsure to talk to you about.

Furries!

Now, I’m sure you all heard that and are either feeling like this:

confused gif

Or like this:

JonTron stop clip

But hear me out. This is going to try to be an introduction into what exactly furries are, and I want to present them in an unbiased and fair light. Howeeeeveerrr… I do have some personal biases associated with it. So, in order to help me explain this a bit better.
Pop; split into normal and fursona

Both: I’m presenting this from two view points!

N: I represent the unbiased analytical view here. I’ll be presenting facts, evidence, and statements founded on research.

F: And I represent the more biased view as an actual member of the fandom! While I am technically “Will”, my name’s Cae, and I’m what’s known as a fursona. Don’t worry, we’ll get to all of this soon enough.

N: First things first, for that confused half of the audience, you’re probably wondering, what the heck is a furry anyway? In the most general sense possible, a ‘furry’ is just a person who has a particular interest in anthropomorphic animals. Anthropomorphic just means that something has human-like attributes.

F: And this can manifest in a lot of different ways which is why the description is so purposefully vague! There are some people who are just fans of certain media, like movies, arts, and games. Others really enjoy creating art, others still like the social aspect of meeting other people. The whole point here is that it’s just a community of people, who all really like animals that act like people!

N: It’s a little different from most fan communities you see, which are usually centered around some central fiction, like a book or movie series. Although, that’s not completely true when it comes to furries...

N: So, initially, furries actually started out as a splinter community of the Science-Fiction community. Around the late 60s, early 70s, depictions of animals acting more like humans was becoming more and more popular in public media. This was towards the end of the golden age of animation in the United States, with many familiar faces like Bugs Bunny, Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo, and so on.

F: One of the biggest influences from this time though had to be Disney! Even though I wasn’t around in the 60s and 70s, I still grew up with lots of movies from the era, such as Robin Hood, The Rescuers, The Fox and the Hound, and The Aristocats. I’m a huge fan of Oliver and Company personally. Like, somebody sat down and said, lets give this terrier a New York accent. insert clip Beautiful.

N: So we’ve thrown a lot of examples of media at you, but realistically, the furry community isn’t just based around already produced media. One of the cornerstone ideals of the furry community is creativity, along with escapism. Many furries create art, and a significant amount of people who aren’t, do own furry-related merchandise like art prints.

F: Surprisingly enough, I personally only own one piece of art. Because commissions can get really expensive. I have a lot of game though!’

N: Furries don’t just create traditional kinds of art, but also music, and even costuming, which is a large part of the community. Fursuits, essentially costumes meant to replicate a fursona, are commonly created, bought, and sold among the community.

F: Oh!! this is a great time to bring up fursonas! So, a fursona is a character that someone will create to interact in certain ways in the community. Wether it be for role-playing, or for art, or for a fursuit, people try to channel a little bit of themselves into their characters.

N: And fursonas also tend to be a more idealized version of one’s self, as well as an easy and relatable way to connect to the community.

F: Like me! In fact, some people will treat fursona’s more as characters rather than an extension of themselves. Again, like me! Even though I am a version of “Will”, I am also my own independent character, that gets used in all sorts of creative things, mainly writing!

N: A place where many people show off their fursonas are at furry conventions, by wearing fursuits. Furry conventions are simply large gatherings of furries who just hang out and socialize for, usually, about a weekend. Not much too it, really.

F: Even though I’ve never personally been to a furry con, I was able to talk to Dr. Kathleen Gerbasi about them! She even had an interesting story to tell involving one of them.

N: Jumping off of some of that, it may be a little difficult to really connect with some of these people, especially since trying to get an idea of what kind of person someone is can be difficult through a character. So-

F: So here’s a list of relatively popular people who are furries!!!

N: Before we gt to some of the outliers, I should mention that, due to the fandom’s social nature, there are a subsection of particular “celebrities” called Popufurs. These include people like…

Majira Strawberry

a popular YouTuber who makes vlogs and short skit videos relating to the fandom, currently with over 100 thousand subscribers.

Tirrel

A British furry artist and animator, that has been active in the community for over a decade. A warning if you want to check out some of his works, they can get… bizzare.

F: Best way I can describe it is abstract, but also sort of edgy.

N: There are plenty other popufurs that I could list here, but, we’d be here for a while, so, lets move on to-

F: SONIC FOX!

N: SHUT UP, AND STOP INTERRUPTING ME!

Smack; muzzled

Yes, so, Andrew W.K.’s a bit of a strange example first off. He’s been interested and supportive of the furry community for quite a while, but whether he is one or not is a slight grey area.

F: He does have a fursona though!

N: That’s true, and it’s named Party Animal.

Party Animal pics

N: Next up, Ken Ashcorp. He’s a furry musician, who mainly makes rock and pop style music on his YouTube channel, where his music usually gets anywhere from 100 thousand to 6 million views per song.

F: Interesting side note! Ken’s fursona, called Kenny, is a girl! A good example of someone’s fursona not having to be a direct reflection of their physical form.

N: Here’s a bit of a controversial one… Arizona Republican Representative, Kelly Townsend.

F: What?

N: Yeah. She said she was one on Twitter after she asked someone what a furry was. This could have just been a PR move, too.

F: She has a fursona though, it’s a lion.

N: So she does… Regardless, Mrs. Townsend is still a little up in the air. Moving on to-

F: SONIC FOX!!!

N: Alright!!! So, Sonic Fox is the name of a competitive e-sports player. His real name is Dominique, but most people just refer to him as Sonic Fox, or Sonic. He’s one of the best fighting game players to ever compete, in the world. He’s won 7 different competitions. In his first one, he wore a hat with blue fur and ears. In his most recent tournament, he made it to 2nd place while wearing a fursuit. He’s also very active on twitter, commonly involving himself with memes and showing his appreciation for the large amount of fan art he recieves.

F: They even use his fursona in official promotional material! This man is one of my heroes. If I wasn’t so bad at fighting games, I’d want to play him sometime.

dark glow from the ground

F: ...What’s that?

N: sigh that’s the bad stuff.

F: Oh no…

N: Yeah… Figured we were going to have to cover it soon enough…

Picks up black folder

N: So, like in any community, there are some bad eggs. The furry community has a particularly strange subculture though…

F: You don’t mean…

N: Nazis. We’re talking about Nazi Furries ladies and gentlemen.

F: We truly are in the darkest timeline

smash montage of weird shit

N: So, uh… the Nazi Fur movement is actually a very… strange one. As best I could tell, it’s almost a sort of anti-punk movement in the furry community. One of the most prominent Nazi Furs, Fox-… sigh Foxler, regularly wears a fursuit with a very nazi-esque insignia on the arm. According to a few members of the.. community? Movement? It’s sort of an ideal of making the furry fandom a less “degenerate” place. It’s really hard to pin down what exactly these guys are completely about to be honest. As on member, Qu Qu said in an interview with New Statesman: “You can’t easily tell how many layers of irony we’re on. This is by design, and you will start to see more and more political movements which bury themselves beneath layers of irony and yet still manage to get things done.”

F: ...The hell does that mean?

N: Great question. I have no idea. Gotta be honest though, if they’re looking for exposure and attention, they’re sure getting it.

F: I guess you could say that Foxler has quite the cult of FURsonality!

N: Do you want the muzzle again?

F: No no, I’ll stop...Is there a better note we can end on?

N: Nope. Still have one more bad thing to talk about.

F: UGGGH!

N: It’s… bad, but still important. So, for many people on the internet, their first exposure to the furry community is through-

F: Do we really have to bring this up?

N: YES! Is through… pornography and other sexually explicit content. For those of you that feel that is may be a bit out of the blue in an anonymous survey I posted to two different furry communities on Reddit, I asked a question about how people originally became interested in the fandom. Sexually explicit content was the second most common response, only behind cartoons and movies.

F: Alright, you know what, I’ll take this one. So, I’d like to point out that this is one of those “Loud minority creates public opinion” sort of cases. Just due to the nature of the furry community having quite a few members who purposefully defy norms, or are just not traditionally socially standard, there are some content creators who create somewhat taboo and provocative imagery. Keep in mind, these people are still the minority. But, because of their strange and unorthodox contributions to the community, their works are what a lot of people see first, simply because they are strange. Because of this, quite a few people view the community as a group of outcasts and depraved individuals Although, thanks in part to the internet, and the rapid growth of the community because of it, this view has started to fade some, which is excellent.

See! Good note to end on, people are liking furries more!

N: In fact, in the cartoon network show “OK KO Let’s be heroes”, they did an episode that involved furries, in both a sort of backwards and direct way. The main characters end up becoming animal versions of themselves, but, when they find out they can’t change back, they end up, well… Just watch.

OK KO Episode 28 clip

F: That’s fantastic!

N: Isn’t it? Well, thank you all for listening to us… well...

fuse back together.

Me, ramble for quite a while. I hope you learned something!

End on clip from Disney's Robin Hood

References

Patten, F. (2012, September 07). Retrospective: An Illustrated Chronology of Furry Fandom, 1966–1996. Retrieved from http://www.flayrah.com/4117/retrospective-illustrated-chronology-furry-fandom-1966-1996

Plante, C. N., Reysen, S., Roberts, S. E., & Gerbasi, K. C. (2016). FurScience: A summary of five years of research from the international anthropomorphic research project. Furscience, 4-161. Retrieved from furscience.org

Gerbasi, K., Conway, S., Paolone, N., Privitera, A., Scaletta, L., Higner, J., & Bernstein, P. (2008). Furries from A to Z (Anthropomorphism to Zoomorphism). Society & Animals, 16(3), 197-222. doi:10.1163/156853008x323376

Roberts, S., Plante, C., Gerbasi, K., & Reysen, S. (2015). Clinical Interaction with Anthropomorphic Phenomenon: Notes for health professionals about interacting with clients who possess this unusual identity. Health and Social Work, 40, 2, e42-e50.

On Furry Community Script: Text

Video script for Writing and Research final project.

(Note, this was written to be a script for me personally and to be shared with classmates for feedback. Directions in bold are for me as I was recording the script.)

Pop into frame

Hey there everyone! So, today I have something rather interesting and semi-obsure to talk to you about.

Furries!

Now, I’m sure you all heard that and are either feeling like this:

confused gif

Or like this:

JonTron stop clip

Both: I’m presenting this from two view points!

N: I represent the unbiased analytical view here. I’ll be presenting facts, evidence, and statements founded on research.

F: And I represent the more biased view as an actual member of the fandom! While I am technically “Will”, my name’s Cae, and I’m what’s known as a fursona. Don’t worry, we’ll get to all of this soon enough.

N: It’s a little different from most fan communities you see, which are usually centered around some central fiction, like a book or movie series. Although, that’s not completely true when it comes to furries...

F: Surprisingly enough, I personally only own one piece of art. Because commissions can get really expensive. I have a lot of game though!’

N: Furries don’t just create traditional kinds of art, but also music, and even costuming, which is a large part of the community. Fursuits, essentially costumes meant to replicate a fursona, are commonly created, bought, and sold among the community.

F: Oh!! this is a great time to bring up fursonas! So, a fursona is a character that someone will create to interact in certain ways in the community. Wether it be for role-playing, or for art, or for a fursuit, people try to channel a little bit of themselves into their characters.

N: And fursonas also tend to be a more idealized version of one’s self, as well as an easy and relatable way to connect to the community.

F: Like me! In fact, some people will treat fursona’s more as characters rather than an extension of themselves. Again, like me! Even though I am a version of “Will”, I am also my own independent character, that gets used in all sorts of creative things, mainly writing!

N: A place where many people show off their fursonas are at furry conventions, by wearing fursuits. Furry conventions are simply large gatherings of furries who just hang out and socialize for, usually, about a weekend. Not much too it, really.

F: Even though I’ve never personally been to a furry con, I was able to talk to Dr. Kathleen Gerbasi about them! She even had an interesting story to tell involving one of them.

N: Jumping off of some of that, it may be a little difficult to really connect with some of these people, especially since trying to get an idea of what kind of person someone is can be difficult through a character. So-

F: So here’s a list of relatively popular people who are furries!!!

N: Before we gt to some of the outliers, I should mention that, due to the fandom’s social nature, there are a subsection of particular “celebrities” called Popufurs. These include people like…

Majira Strawberry

a popular YouTuber who makes vlogs and short skit videos relating to the fandom, currently with over 100 thousand subscribers.

Tirrel

A British furry artist and animator, that has been active in the community for over a decade. A warning if you want to check out some of his works, they can get… bizzare.

F: Best way I can describe it is abstract, but also sort of edgy.

N: There are plenty other popufurs that I could list here, but, we’d be here for a while, so, lets move on to-

F: SONIC FOX!

N: SHUT UP, AND STOP INTERRUPTING ME!

Smack; muzzled

Yes, so, Andrew W.K.’s a bit of a strange example first off. He’s been interested and supportive of the furry community for quite a while, but whether he is one or not is a slight grey area.

F: He does have a fursona though!

N: That’s true, and it’s named Party Animal.

Party Animal pics

N: Next up, Ken Ashcorp. He’s a furry musician, who mainly makes rock and pop style music on his YouTube channel, where his music usually gets anywhere from 100 thousand to 6 million views per song.

F: Interesting side note! Ken’s fursona, called Kenny, is a girl! A good example of someone’s fursona not having to be a direct reflection of their physical form.

N: Here’s a bit of a controversial one… Arizona Republican Representative, Kelly Townsend.

F: What?

N: Yeah. She said she was one on Twitter after she asked someone what a furry was. This could have just been a PR move, too.

F: She has a fursona though, it’s a lion.

N: So she does… Regardless, Mrs. Townsend is still a little up in the air. Moving on to-

F: SONIC FOX!!!

F: They even use his fursona in official promotional material! This man is one of my heroes. If I wasn’t so bad at fighting games, I’d want to play him sometime.

dark glow from the ground

F: ...What’s that?

N: sigh that’s the bad stuff.

F: Oh no…

N: Yeah… Figured we were going to have to cover it soon enough…

*Picks up black folder*

N: So, like in any community, there are some bad eggs. The furry community has a particularly strange subculture though…

F: You don’t mean…

N: Nazis. We’re talking about Nazi Furries ladies and gentlemen.

F: We truly are in the darkest timeline

smash montage of weird shit

F: ...The hell does that mean?

N: Great question. I have no idea. Gotta be honest though, if they’re looking for exposure and attention, they’re sure getting it.

F: I guess you could say that Foxler has quite the cult of FURsonality!

N: Do you want the muzzle again?

F: No no, I’ll stop...Is there a better note we can end on?

N: Nope. Still have one more bad thing to talk about.

F: UGGGH!

N: It’s… bad, but still important. So, for many people on the internet, their first exposure to the furry community is through-

F: Do we really have to bring this up?

See! Good note to end on, people are liking furries more!

OK KO Episode 28 clip

F: That’s fantastic!

N: Isn’t it? Well, thank you all for listening to us… well...

fuse back together.

Me, ramble for quite a while. I hope you learned something!

End on clip from Disney's Robin Hood

References

Patten, F. (2012, September 07). Retrospective: An Illustrated Chronology of Furry Fandom, 1966–1996. Retrieved from http://www.flayrah.com/4117/retrospective-illustrated-chronology-furry-fandom-1966-1996

Plante, C. N., Reysen, S., Roberts, S. E., & Gerbasi, K. C. (2016). FurScience: A summary of five years of research from the international anthropomorphic research project. Furscience, 4-161. Retrieved from furscience.org

Gerbasi, K., Conway, S., Paolone, N., Privitera, A., Scaletta, L., Higner, J., & Bernstein, P. (2008). Furries from A to Z (Anthropomorphism to Zoomorphism). Society & Animals, 16(3), 197-222. doi:10.1163/156853008x323376

Roberts, S., Plante, C., Gerbasi, K., & Reysen, S. (2015). Clinical Interaction with Anthropomorphic Phenomenon: Notes for health professionals about interacting with clients who possess this unusual identity. Health and Social Work, 40, 2, e42-e50.

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Picks up black folder