Folks are doing this here meme quiz thing, but I don't like things where you only answer questions in response to likes that you might never get. Also having ≥ 50% of the context stuffed in an image is not very screen reader friendly.
So I'm just gonna do it here. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
(Some answers may verge on NSFW and kink stuff, but there's nothing actually NSFW in here.)
1. How long have you been in the furry fandom?
Since around autumn 2005. As of 2023, that would be 18 years in the fandom. Am I greymuzzle yet?
2. How did you first discover the fandom?
Hahahahahaha, well... Y'know Scooby Doo, yeah? Y'know those episodes of Scooby Doo where he eat the big sandwich or something and gets kinda fat?
Yeah I was Google image searching that.
Ended up finding art by Captain Furry on the Shadowlord Inc. website (amazingly still online, though no longer seems to host fan art), and from there hopped over to The InflationNation (RIP) and Fur Affinity (also somehow still kicking).
The neat thing is that I still fairly vividly remember the image that led me to the fandom. I can't seem to find it anywhere now, though.
3. What are your favourite aspects of the community?
My draw to the furry fandom has pretty much always been its use as a way to define yourself and how you are presented online. With hindsight, it’s kinda obvious that this appeal was driven by physical dysphoria and the desire to be something other than human.
The fandom becoming a bit more radically inclusive and decidedly anti-corporate is definitely a welcome change, but it definitely has not been like that the entire time I’ve been in the fandom.
4. What was your first fursona?
Tori Andrew Belliachi. A wolf.
The first art of any of my fursonas, by Okina.
I didn’t have a fursona when I first joined the fandom. Tori came into existence about a year later. He existed, with a minor species change, for just over two years before I became permanent and inexorably associated with bat characters.
(This is cheating slightly, as there was an earlier version of this character that looked radically different, but which only existed for like... two days, tops.)
5. Describe your current fursona.
My current fursona is Emy, though that’s not a name it’s too used to by now. It’s a Honduran white bat who accidentally fell into a robot conversion machine one day and is now the technology.
Emy’s reference sheet, by Samael.
6. Why did you choose your fursona’s species?
As mentioned before, I’ve been a bat since 2008. Originally this was as a long-tongued fruit bat, but in 2011 I changed to a Honduran white bat.
Bats are neat. Really neat. They fly! But they’re mammals!
I also have some love for bat characters in media but that’s a spoiler for a later question.
7. How much of your sona is based on yourself?
Yes.
To be honest, I don’t know. Emy is ‘me’ insomuch as—barring some backstory—they don’t really have a distinct personality that’s separate from my own.
Emy is also kinda an idealised version of oneself, what with being robot otherkin and all. Robots are neat.
8. Post some favourite art of your fursona.
I’m posting art as I go along anyway, so I’ll pick just one for here.
The only ‘non-toony’ art of Emy I’ve gotten so far, by Integration.
9. If you had to change sona species, what’d you pick?
Honestly it’d be hard to move away from a bat after so long. I suppose the next most obvious answer would be a squirrel, given that’s Olive’s fursona, otherwise probably a corvid like a crow or raven.
10. How do you feel about fursuits?
For much of the last 17 ’n’ a bit years, weirdly indifferent. I’ve never really felt like commissioning, wearing or performing in one. Indeed, I’ve only ever worn a fursuit head once, not even the whole suit.
Lately though my stance has softened (blame Olive) though, and I think I’d be down for trying it out and maybe getting stuff in future.
11. How do you feel about furry conventions?
I’ve only been to one convention, officially, which was ConFuzzled 2010. It was alright. I enjoyed it, but not enough to really be willing to spend that much money to go to another con, especially when fur meets are free and plentiful.
This year I’ll be attending ConFuzzled 2023, so we’ll see if that changes my mind on anything!
12. Have you brought anyone into the fandom?
Gosh yes, so many, often without trying to. Just by being a furry who never hid being a furry from their peers has brought some folks in by osmosis, at least.
There are a couple where there’s been a more direct involvement, but I’m not really in touch with them anymore so won’t namedrop them out of respect for their privacy.
13. Paws or maws?
Maws.
14. Favourite anthro character from pop culture?
It will always, always be Batty Koda from FernGully: The Last Rainforest.
He’s a cybernetically-enhanced bat voiced by Robin Williams who raps. You can’t improve on that!
15. What’s your biggest furry pet peeve? / 18. What can we do better as a community?
This is two questions on the quiz, but my answer is the same for both, so I’mma munge them together.
I personally believe that there is too much prominence on the ‘adult’ side of the furry fandom.
My view may be skewed, being someone who’s sex-repulsed asexual and who joined the fandom at a young age, but seeing adult content feels practically unavoidable on so many furry sites and spaces. Either you opt into seeing it, or you’re forced to filter so much stuff that your experience is intrinsically degraded.
When I was a more active administrator at WikiFur, pretty much all of the top 20 most-visited articles and most-referred search queries would be related to pornography somehow.
As of late there seems to have been a greater push for furries to be unashamedly horny on main in order to be sex and kink positive and to dissuade attempts at corporatisation (both things I support!) but it also means that I don’t tend to get a choice but to be exposed to adult content, like it or not.
On the flip side, I’ve had many friends who’ve had aspects of their identities immediately assumed to be kinky or sexual in nature (e.g. a person who’s overweight IRL having an overweight fursona, and the immediate assumption that they must have a fat fetish).
I don’t really have ideas for a fix here. More social media services integrating content warnings before displaying content are useful—more useful than filters and muting—but they’re by no means universal and depend on the uploader actually providing a useful warning in the first place.
16. What is the origin of your online nickname?
batbeeps: Robot bat goes beep. Simples.
17. How has your view of the fandom changed over time?
It’s fluctuated an awful lot, to be honest. From 2005 to 2009 I thought it was the hottest shit, probably the best fandom and community in the world. I was heavily involved in numerous projects from websites to videos to wikis, all about the fandom.
Between 2010 and 2012 that perception started to wane severely. I became pretty disillusioned with the fandom, in part because of aforementioned seemingly inescapable adult content, but also because of encountering an increasing number of... fairly unpleasant individuals.
2012 to 2016, I effectively took as a hiatus from the fandom. This is probably the period when I was most disillusioned with the fandom, rather actively disliking it at times, but I still kept in touch with some friends and still existed on the fringes of furry spaces online, removing myself from the projects that I had been previously involved with and giving up on my artistic endeavours of previous years.
Since 2017, I’ve slowly warmed back up to the fandom. I’m not as participatory as I was pre-2010, and may well never be again, but I’m okay with that.
I’m still working to refine what level of involvement I’m comfortable with nowadays, attending furmeets and (soon to be) conventions again. Just gotta see how it goes.
19. Happiest memory from your time in the fandom?
It’s been so long that I don’t think I could pin down any one thing. Honestly, just casually hanging out with friends is about as happy place as it often gets.
20. What does the fandom mean to you?
The fandom is a place where I can... pretty much be myself. In totality. Other communities might get to hear bits about my gender identity or otherkin sensibilities, but furries are the only group where I don’t feel the need to censor any aspect of who I am.