Being a furry could be a choice, some genetically transmitted paraphilia, the next step in the teenage angsty iconoclastic arms race, or something else entirely but regardless of cause it is a lifestyle with which I feel fully in my rights to raise an eyebrow to.  My TF2 community has dealt with its fair share and I’m disappointed in that there seems to be a coin flip’s rather than a dice roll’s chance that the person in question is an absolute dick.  To not single them out, these also seem to be the asshole odds on people that claim to be high school students, independent musicians, or worse of all, people who have run other gaming communities.

One of our current community members includes a link to a fur affinity site in his steam profile and it terminated in a page of such content as to make me wish their community were either larger or smaller instead of the uncomfortable middle land it currently occupies; large enough to be a recognized group but not yet large enough to have experts in the field and large sub-communities.  After I stopped laughing at the word “fursonna”, I was disappointed by the combinations that people had chosen.   People cleaved to the powerful, the mythical, and the bizarre but there were no capybaras (adorable), dik-diks (even more adorable), or megatheria (extinct) among their lot.  The combinations were also seemingly uninspired.  Wow, an eagle and a lion… woooo, why not a combination of a cheetah and a three-toed sloth or dolphin with a bird of prey?  The former would be worthy of thought and the latter worthy of fear but these seem unexplored.

A friend of mine posits that the movement comes from the need to be “other” and with the advent of modernity, most regular wants are satiated so people are getting more creative.  This may be the case, but I have always been an advocate of realizing the here and now to the point where I may move to add a “fursonna” field to our our team’s roster page just so those of like mind can take a second and post “homo sapien” in defiance.  I wonder what patterns would emerge geographically.  Maybe there are more zebra and oryx furries in Africa and my wanted capybaras near the Andes.  Knowing that there was someone who chose adder, cuddle fish, or scorpion running about the Levant would make me smile and say “proper job”.