Month: March 2016

as originally posted on adjective species.com by Corgi W.

In 1974, the philosopher Thomas Nagel first asked “What is it like to be a bat?”[1] Whilst originally an essay concerning the interaction between mind and body (and something highly worth reading for anybody with even a passing interest in the philosophy of mind), Nagel may have unintentionally left something important for the furry community to consider.

In his essay, Nagel wonders what it would be like to be a bat; what it would be like to see, hear, and experience the world from the subjective point of view that bats posses. He concludes that, as much as we may know about the brains of bats, about how echo location is supposed to work, and how they live day-to-day, we will never be able to understand exactly “what it is like to be a bat.” Despite our knowledge of echo-location, for example, without directly experiencing it, we can only imagine how it would feel to use it, and what we imagine would be conjured in relation to our experiences, not a bat’s. There is therefore an “aboutness” to being anything, a “how it feels to be X”, to everything conscious. This would hold true for every non-human creature, (as any bat furries may be pleased to hear). Therefore, when we identify as an animal, it can never be said that we have the “full picture” of it; only what we can observe, vis. You may identify as a wolf, but you are only identifying as the observable behaviours of wolves, and any inferences made from those, not as what a wolf actually experiences or thinks.

Now, consider “anthropomorphics.” Across multiple dictionaries, the consensus of the definition is “to ascribe human properties to something non-human”[2,3,4]. For example, we would be anthropomorphising the wind if we were to say “the wind is angry”; anger is a human emotion, but we are prescribing it to something inanimate. Similarly, when we attach human traits to animals, we are anthropomorphising them, such as when we imagine that a raven is cunning, or a pig is lazy.

What we must remember is that the pig is not actually lazy; we are merely taking what we call “laziness” in humans, and prescribing them to the pig. For all we know, from the pig’s point of view, it may be working very hard at whatever it is that it’s doing.

What I’ve said hitherto may seem like common sense, and, hopefully, it has. But consider what a person does when they create a furry character or fursona. Ordinarily, people believe that they are taking the animal and applying human features to it (anthropomorphising). However, it’s worth taking a look at the process of choosing.

Some choose an animal they like for an aesthetic reason, for example, “foxes look cool” (Result from the 2013 Furry Survey). Whilst others make their decision based upon perceived traits that an animal has: “Foxes are clever, and dignified” (Result from the 2013 Furry Survey), and “Real canines repay all the love and hate they receive in droves, which I admire, and represent the frank, sometimes ill-informed, honesty and loyalty that I exude” (Result from the 2013 Furry Survey).

The two attitudes can be categorised as either “aesthetic” or “personal”, the former being born from taking pleasure in the way an animal looks, the latter being formed by identifying with the subjective understanding of the already anthropomorphic traits the animal has.

In the case of the aesthetic, we can safely say that they have anthropomorphised; they have looked at an animal, and applied human features to it.

But in the “personal” category, something much more complex has happened. A person has taken the already anthropomorphic traits ascribed to an animal and used that as their “base”. For example, a person may have chosen a coyote due to the animal typically being thought of as “cunning”. What has happened here is not about the animal at all, but the representation, vis. the traits applied to it (which it does not intrinsically posses). The identity is with the “cunning” attached to the coyote – a purely human notion. Afterwards, due to it’s association, the coyote becomes a representation of “cunning”; it is used as a symbol to convey human thought, having nothing to do with actual coyotes. We cannot know “what it is like to be a coyote”, thus, we cannot say we identify as them on any level other than the one of which we understand them.

The term “zoomorphic”, generally, means “to use an animal symbolically”[5,6,7]. I believe that in the case of the “personal” category of choosing an animal character, this term is superior to “anthropomorphic”, for there is nothing to be made human; there is an identity with what is already human represented through an animal. The animal is symbolic; used to show something human, as opposed to existing independently of human perception, and having human traits applied to it.

This can be furthered through fictional entities, which can be argued to exist as embodiments of human concepts and ideas. A dragon, for example, does not exist independently of human imagination; it is a creature created as pure symbolism, although it may be representing different things across different times and cultures. Dragons, and other fictional entities, are human symbols, embodying various traits. To bring us back to earlier, there is no “what is it like to be a dragon.” It is impossible to apply human traits to something that already exists as human traits and say you have created an anthropomorphic dragon; the creature was already human, you have merely changed what it represented.

Where does this leave us? Personally, I feel that the clarification is more than just applying the appropriate term. It helps us to understand what we are doing, and what our characters mean, as well as what those around us are trying to achieve. If nothing else, I hope that this article has given you something to consider the next time you create an animal character, and what it really means.

[1]T. Nagel, What is is it like to be a bat? “The Philosophical Review LXXXIII, 4 (October 1974)”, Pp. 435­50.] http://organizations.utep.edu/portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf

[2]Merriman and Webster Dictionary: http://www.merriam­webster.com/dictionary/anthropomorphic

[3]The Free Dictionary: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/anthropomorphic

[4]The Dictionary Online: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/anthropomorphic

[5] Merriman and Webster Dictionary: http://www.merriam­webster.com/dictionary/zoomorphic

[6]The Free Dictionary: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/zoomorphic

[7]The Dictionary Online: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/zoomorphic

This article released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 license

as originally posted on Rolling Stone

“Weird Al” Yankovic knows a good song when he hears one — four decades’ worth of spot-on parodies can attest to that. But the singer-accordionist, who’s gearing up for a summer tour in support of 2014’s hit Mandatory Fun LP, also has an ear for the offbeat, as this playlist demonstrates. “I want to stress that these are not bad songs,” Yankovic told Rolling Stone of his selections. “I personally really like all of them. All I’m saying is, this is a sampling of tunes that most people wouldn’t particularly appreciate hearing through their bedroom wall at two o’clock in the morning.”

Styx, “Plexiglass Toilet”

I think most critics at Rolling Stone would probably agree that the creative pinnacle of Styx’s body of work would have to be the unlisted track on their third album, The Serpent is Rising, known as “Plexiglass Toilet.” It’s a jaunty little calypso number told from the perspective of a caring mother who admonishers her son not to sit down on a Plexiglass toilet, and also that he should “wipe his butt clean with the paper, to make it nice for everyone.” Certainly sound, solid advice, and a catchy tune to boot. But I imagine if need be this song could be used as a nonviolent way to torture political prisoners, sort of the audio equivalent of waterboarding.

I don’t think that Styx are particularly proud of this one. It’s a deep cut. I don’t think they do that very much in concert these days, but it was big on the Dr. Demento Show back in the day. I certainly enjoy it more than some of their hits.

Parry Gripp, “Up Butt Coconut”

https://youtu.be/vxmY3GugsPQ

This is a 30-second song by Parry Gripp from Nerf Herder. He creates short and insanely catchy jingles and Internet memes, and he’s a master at producing earworms. “Up Butt Coconut,” is particularly subversive. If you listen to the song on repeat long enough, you actually start to think that it might be a good idea to stick a coconut up your butt, or maybe that’s just me. I don’t know.”

The Five Blobs, “The Blob”

This is probably the most obscure one on the list. When I was nine years old, I loved The Blob, the original 1950s movie with Steve McQueen. A local TV station in L.A. played it every night for a week, and I watched it every single time. And for me, the best part was always the theme song by the Five Blobs, which played over the opening credits. “Beware of the blob/It creeps, it leaps, and glides and slides across the floor.” I found out much later that the song was written by Burt Bacharach and Mack David. Not Hal David, mind you, but Mack, his brother. One of the very first Burt Bacharach hits, actually. It’s a really catchy tune, and it has a great, memorable, iconic sax solo, but if you listen to it for 10 hours on a continuous loop, there’s a good chance it’ll drive you clinically insane.

John Hartford, “Boogie”

John Hartford, you might remember, was an extremely well-respected folk, country and bluegrass artist. He was a regular on the Smothers Brothers variety show back in the 1960s, and he also composed the huge Glen Campbell hit “Gentle on My Mind.” But for me, John Hartford will always be remembered as the guy who recorded “Boogie.” It’s an aggressively weird solo a cappella track on which he repeatedly grunts and growls about exactly how and where he’d like to “boogie woogie woogie with you.” It’s equal parts funny and disturbing, and I would think the ideal thing to use to break your lease when played at high volumes.

Wild Man Fischer, “Merry-Go-Round”

Larry “Wild Man” Fischer was a certified bipolar, acute schizophrenic street musician who was discovered by Frank Zappa in the late 1960s. Zappa produced his first album, which is called An Evening With Wild Man Fischer. The album’s long been out of print, and from what I’ve been told, the Zappa estate has chosen to never re-release it. I guess you could say “Merry Go Round” was the “hit” from that album. Over loopy percussion, Larry yelps — I’m gonna say, an infinite number of times — that we should join him as he goes up and down on a merry-go-round. It’s a really joyous song. It’s primal, and certainly impassioned, but I imagine that if you had to listen to it on repeat for an entire weekend you might need to be institutionalized yourself.

as originally posted on adjectivespecies.com by Rabbit

At furry conventions, I tend to physically stand out from the crowd. I’m older than most furs, and don’t tend to wear “convention gear” like ears and a tail. Indeed, due to sheer absent-mindedness I often even forget to wear my badge. So it’s natural, I suppose, that “outsiders” often approach me and ask “Sir, what is this whole “furry” thing about, anyway? Why is everyone here dressed so strangely?”

So, in turn it’s also natural that I’ve given considerable thought to the matter. “We’re people who like anthropomorphic art and literature and such,” is my usual quick-and-dirty answer. “Think Nick Wilde, or Bugs Bunny.” And that’s usually good enough; people approaching a stranger in public generally aren’t seeking anything more. Yet this is also the simplest and most facile of all responses, one that opens more doors than it closes. For the people surrounding us when this conversation takes place have often traveled hundreds or even thousands of miles to be there, crossed entire continents and oceans on journeys that they’ve often saved for years to undertake. With all due to respect to Nick and Bugs, there’s clearly something much deeper at work.

This is a problem I’ve been thinking about from many different angles for over fifteen years. It was about a decade ago that I first proposed— in a similarly-themed column in a similar venue— that people become furries largely due to being exposed to large numbers of anthropomorphic images during early childhood, specifically during the period of brain development when self-identity is established. (In this stage, children the world over begin to obsessively draw crude circles. Then eyes and a mouth appear, at first grotesquely mis-placed and then growing ever more certain, until it’s clear that all along the goal has been to create a recognizable human face. Many experts believe that this is an outward manifestation of the child learning “I am a human, and these are my kind. I am one of these.”) When one’s environment is populated with warm, smiling plush animals, not to mention colorful, attention-fixating “living” images playfully capering across the video-screens that seem to soak up an ever-growing proportion of our childhood, well… I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that many of today’s furries scowled in infantile concentration and scrawled out pointy ears atop the heads of those first clumsy images, and perhaps whiskers, muzzles and outsized eyes as well. I don’t claim to know this for fact, nor is it a theory I’m advancing in any sort of serious academic way— I’m a retired auto worker, after all, not a developmental psychologist. But it’s compelling enough that, as a thoughtful non-professional. I’ve never come across a better theory.

Because, you see, furry clearly runs deep. It has to, or else people wouldn’t willingly spend so much or travel so far or, for that matter, expose themselves to so much ridicule. Over and over again I’ve met furs who’ve “discovered” the fandom at a relatively advanced age, and it’s almost invariably a profoundly emotional experience for them. They smile and weep and claim to feel “at home” and “among their own kind” for the first time ever. (Certainly this was the case for me.)

Does this sound like something rooted in the very core of one’s self-identity, or what? I’m lucky in that I have two clear memories of being three years old. One of them is of me picturing myself as an anthropomorphic character. Not as a pretend-thing— to me it was real, the way I was supposed to be shaped. Not only do I suspect that I’ve been shaped that way somewhere deep down in my own head ever since, but I also suspect that many other “hard-core furries” are “wrong-shaped” as well. If my theory is indeed correct, this has profound implications both for us as individuals and the fandom as a whole. Even the sexual aspects of the furry fandom seem— to uneducated me, at least— rooted in a “different” self-identity at the very deepest of levels. The vast majority of the sex-poses and erotic situations portrayed in furry erotica are perfectly accessible to humans of fully normal anatomy. Yet for some (not all, and probably not even most!) furries these otherwise very ordinary portrayals convey far more power when the characters wear permanent fur coats. Why does this matter so much, if not that it reflects a “kink” in our innermost self-identities?

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. One of the few demonstrably unique traits that defines humanity is the ability to put one’s self in someone else’s head and see things from their point of view. (Studies show that the majority of four-year-olds are capable of this, while most two-year-olds are not. It’s an intellectual leap chimps and other species never take.) I suspect that people who have a fuzzy (pun intended) sense of self-identity tend to be better at this than “ordinary” people. Which in turns quite logically leads to increased empathy and all the things that follow from it. Including perhaps the tendency towards acceptance and tolerance that pretty much everyone, even outsiders, perceives as one of the more remarkable hallmarks of our fandom. I’d also submit that it also probably makes for a higher level of creativity in general— certainly as a writer I’ve personally benefitted from the ability to “see through alien eyes”. In fact, I’ve almost come to regard it as a sort of social superpower.

So that’s what I, in my uneducated, non-professional way, think furry is really all about. It’s a broadened sense of self-identity that sometimes arises due to a child-rearing practice quite common in our culture— that of drowning our children in highly-attractive anthro-imagery during a key developmental stage, imagery close enough to human that we “mistakenly” incorporate it into our deepest sense of self. We seek each other out and rejoice in our brotherhood because we really are different in a fundamental and basic way, and delight in each other’s art and culture because it truly does diverge in significant, important ways from mainstream society’s product.

Just as we ourselves do.

In other words, I think furries really are different. Most of the passers-by at conventions who question who and what we are will never in a million years either truly understand us or what it is that we’re so profoundly rejoicing in together. Yet because of our innate flexibility of identity, we have no problem whatsoever understanding them.

Advantage, furries!

This article released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 license

I came to that conclusion after sending the info they wanted no less than 3 times and they kept on asking the same info even as they closed my cased and deleted my old account. I have come to a couple of conclusions. First I was targeted you see I have made some complaints to Facebook over spammers. Secondly my tussle with Ryan Hill on Fb, and lastly me being all over the site the last couple of years. I honestly believe me not using my real name, was one of the reasons my account was taken down. I only learned from another furry, if you gain access after it’s been flagged, you better correct your ID info. But then I heard from other furries that this makes no difference, they want you off, they want you off.

But hey setting up a new account is so easy, and once you notify your friends in a group they all hang out in. You get them back.

So in the meantime I decided to pull back from a lot of groups I joined previously and when reporting a spammer leave it to the group’s admins.

But I decided to make my Facebook page public again. I will be sharing that link eventually.