Furries, Fun, & Friendship~

There’s a trillion ways to be creative, and a trillion more to find friends; at their intersection, you can find the entirety of the furry fandom.

There are some things in life that bring you so much joy that, eventually, you have to decide whether you're going to let other people's opinions dictate how much of that joy you're willing to experience.
For my family, furry fandom has become one of those things. Two of my kids and I have fursuit partials, we've already had the opportunity to wear them out in our community, and we're getting increasingly excited about stepping further into a world we've enjoyed from the sidelines for a while. We've never attended a furry convention, but that is absolutely something we intend to change!

Of course, if you've spent any time around the furry community, you know that not everyone understands it, and some people have developed some pretty strong opinions about it without ever bothering to learn much about the people involved.

That's a bit of what I want to talk about today, because there's something rather special about finding a community that makes you happy, even when the world around you doesn't always know what to make of it.

Little Fur, Lotta Stigma

The furry community has spent years dealing with stereotypes, ridicule, and some genuinely ugly assumptions about its members. Sometimes that looks like a few snide comments about costumes. Sometimes it becomes bullying at school, harassment online, or people making deeply inappropriate assumptions about someone's character simply because they enjoy anthropomorphic animal characters.
Then there's the persistent conflation of furry fandom with zoophilia, which deserves to be addressed plainly.

Enjoying fictional anthropomorphic animal characters, creating a fursona, wearing a fursuit, or participating in furry art and community events does not inherently have anything to do with sexual attraction to real animals. Those are different things, and treating them as interchangeable is both inaccurate and hateful to the people who make up this community.

Furry fandom encompasses an enormous range of ages, personalities, interests, and creative pursuits. For many people, it's about art, costume-making, character design, storytelling, friendship, conventions, and having fun with a shared interest. Some members explore adult themes (as happens in plenty of other fandoms) and that doesn't define the community as a whole; it certainly doesn't justify treating every furry as though they're responsible for someone else's assumptions.

People deserve to be understood as individuals rather than reduced to the most sensational thing someone has heard about a group they don't know. Folks will cry when they or someone they love is stereotyped and stigmatized, but because expressing yourself as a furry is a choice, these people justify their own toxicity.

This matters especially when children are involved! Kids should be able to enjoy harmless creative interests without becoming targets for mockery, or being subjected to inappropriate accusations, because an adult has decided their hobby must mean something sinister. There's a difference between reasonable safeguarding and projecting adult assumptions onto children who want to dress up as their favorite creatures and have fun.
Truly, we have enough real problems to work through without inventing additional reasons to make people feel ashamed of something that brings them happiness.

My Kids, My Fursuit, and Casper Pride

One of my favorite experiences so far was bringing our partials to Casper Pride.

Two of my kids and I wore our fursuit pieces, and my kiddos were the smallest furs there. We had people coming up to us asking for hugs and photos, and we got to experience that lovely little pocket of community excitement that happens when people see something fun and want to share in it!

There is something immensely heartwarming about being out in public, dressed as colorful, fluffy creatures, and having strangers approach you with smiles because they want a picture or a hug. This is the magic we are always seeking, the novelty!
For my kids, getting to participate in that experience was especially wonderful. They got to wear something they enjoyed, be part of a community event, and see firsthand that there are people who will respond to their enthusiasm with kindness— which meant the universe to me.
I want my kids to have room to explore their interests, develop their creativity, and find the people who make them feel welcome. I want them to learn how to treat others with compassion, too, including people whose interests or identities they may not immediately understand. We don't have to personally relate to every part of another person's life to treat them with dignity.

I want them to remember experiences like Pride: the photos, the hugs, the excitement, the people who made them smile, and the feeling of being able to participate in something together. These are the memories I want to build more of!

I spoke a little about our fursuits in my Casper Pride blog, but this feels worth revisiting because our involvement is something we're excited to grow. We're already furries… we're just getting ready to explore more of what that means for us!

Why I Feel So At Home in Communities Like This

I've always had a fierce protective streak when it comes to people who are misunderstood, marginalized, or treated unfairly. I care about the way people are talked about when they aren't in the room, the assumptions made about them before anyone bothers to ask a question, and the way a little bit of social permission can turn ordinary teasing into something much uglier.
I've seen how quickly people can become comfortable treating an entire group as a punchline, how easily stereotypes become excuses for exclusion, and how often people are expected to prove that they deserve the same kindness everyone else takes for granted. So, finding another community with its own share of stigma feels strangely aligned with the things I've cared about for a long time.

I don't need every member of a community to be perfect before I believe they deserve fair treatment. I don't need to agree with every person, share every interest, or approve of every decision someone makes. (That's true of any large group of human beings, btw.) What I care about is whether we're willing to recognize people as people, rather than deciding that an entire community can be dismissed because of a stereotype or an individual we dislike. Yes, this does indeed extend to “gotcha” and controversial topics, but I’ll reserve my bigger personal opinions for other posts. (I don’t meet others who agree everyone goes to Heaven, after all.)

Furry fandom has its own creative culture, its own social dynamics, and its own challenges. I'm still learning, and there is plenty I haven't experienced for myself yet! But I already know what it's like to enjoy something that other people misunderstand, and I know how much it can matter to have people around you who respond with enthusiasm instead of judgment.
Being part of a community also means having opportunities to contribute to it. I want to be someone who helps make room for people to enjoy their interests without unnecessary shame, who stands up when people are being treated unfairly, and who encourages my kids to approach unfamiliar communities with curiosity rather than suspicion.

If I can bring a little more kindness, a little more understanding, and a whole lot of fluffy enthusiasm into the spaces I participate in, I'm happy to do so!

The Bullying Is Real. So Is the Joy!

I don't want to pretend that the stigma surrounding furries doesn't exist, or that being open about an interest automatically makes the people around you accepting. Bullying happens. People make assumptions, and children can be especially cruel when they discover an interest they think will make someone an easy target. Adults aren't exactly immune to the same behavior.
For families with furry kids, this can mean having conversations about how to respond to teasing and rumors, when to seek help, how to stay safe online, and how to distinguish between good-faith curiosity and someone who is simply looking for a reaction.

I want my kids to understand that they don't owe every stranger an explanation, and they don't have to argue someone into respecting them. They can choose who gets access to their time and energy. They can walk away from someone who is determined to be unkind.
I also want them to know that the existence of unkind people doesn't mean they should automatically abandon the things they love.
Because the joy is real, too.

It's the excitement of planning a character, finding a little trinket that reminds you of someone's fursona, sharing artwork, admiring another person's costume, or seeing the amount of care that went into making a pair of ears or a tail. It's the laughter that happens when a fursuiter does something ridiculous, the hugs people ask for, the photos that turn into happy memories, and the friendships that can grow out of a shared love of something wonderfully imaginative! Those moments are worth something, everything.
There’s the underrated benefit of the anonymity filter; being able to engage wholly and authentically because you have something between your face, and the rest of the world. You don’t mind being perceived as much, you move freely and with zest! I definitely have big plans to stream with my mask on, as it feels safe and accessible to do that way.

When I think about our experience at Pride, I don't think about what a stranger might have thought of our costumes. I remember the people who came up to us smiling. I remember the photos and the hugs, I remember my kids getting to participate in something that made them happy.
The positive experiences don't magically erase the negative ones, but they remind me why it's worth continuing to show up. I would rather give my family more opportunities to experience that joy than let the possibility of someone else's disapproval decide what we're allowed to enjoy.

Our First Convention Is on the Horizon!

We're looking forward to a whole new adventure: our first furry convention!

We've never been to one, so we're very much in the excited-planning-and-imagining stage. There's a whole world of artwork, costumes, creative vendors, community events, and people to meet, and we're eager to experience it for ourselves.

I imagine there will be plenty to learn, plenty to see, and probably a few things we'll wish we'd known before we arrived. We'll figure it out as we go, make some memories, and hopefully come home with a few new favorite artists, some trinkets, and stories to tell!
I'm especially excited for my kids to experience more of a community where their interest isn't an unusual little thing they happen to enjoy, but something they can share with people who understand the immersion. If you've been to conventions before, you know the feeling I'm talking about: getting to spend time in a place where an interest you might pursue at home on your own becomes a shared experience. (If you haven't, well perhaps we'll be learning together!)

As we prepare for our move to Colorado, I'm hopeful about the possibility of finding more furry friends and creative communities closer to home. We're looking forward to discovering what's out there, meeting people, and becoming a little more involved as we settle into our next chapter of life.

My very first version of my OC, Vivoni, was a shapeshifting Red Wolf. She is now a Mythical Honey Badger.

Here's to Being a Little More Ourselves

There's something beautiful about the things that allow us to be playful, imaginative, and unapologetically enthusiastic about what we love. For us, the furry community is becoming another place to make those memories. We get to create, dress up, share, appreciate art, collect little treasures, and enjoy being goofy together. We get to meet people who share our interests and discover things we might never have encountered otherwise!
We get to do all of that while teaching our kids something I hope they carry with them for the rest of their lives: other people don't have to understand your joy for it to be real, and you don't have to understand someone else's joy to treat it with kindness.

There will always be people who have something unkind to say, and there will always be stereotypes that take time and patience to challenge. We can acknowledge those realities without letting them take up all the room in our lives.

Now I'm looking forward to more fursuit adventures, more art, more hugs, more trinkets, and the day we finally get to experience our first convention together! We're already part of this community, and we're excited to step a little further into it.

If you see us out and about in our fluffy finery, feel free to say hello. We might just make your day a lil more magical. ♡