#maybe its just my limited internet scopes that makes me think that tho. i mean its big enough to have a reference in the locked tomb series!

[tea-leef]

i feel like there is very close alternate timeline where the gray llama from llamas with hats got like...one of those ~2014 style twinkish anime humanized forms that took off and became a huge tumblr sexyman. and tumblr teens would write really sincere yandere-flavored shipping fics between the humanized llama designs

I’m not saying this would have been good, but like. u know what I mean? I feel like it could have happened so easily

[0poole]

The Thing about Furries

This is literally me thinking to myself and putting it online under the guise someone else might care enough to read it, so really there’s no actual point to this, feel free to ignore.

Also obviously I just gotta say people can do whatever the hell they want as long as it isn’t hurting someone else in some way. Also, this is pretty much exclusively about the character design aspects of furry-ism and not the IRL aspects anyways.

So my brother just introduced me to Beastars (even though I’ve known about it for a long time because internet) and after being super insanely into Animal Crossing and other junk, it feels like I have to piece together my thoughts about “furry” characters because it’s funky. Like, insanely funky. Everyone agrees that it’s funky too, which is weird. Usually some people are just making it funky for laughs/dismissiveness but no, here it’s pretty universally funky.

First of all, the definition for the purpose of talking about it. Let’s just say a “furry” character is an animal character with distinctly human traits and talks. For the sake of scope, since the term “funky” made me think of it, Donkey Kong is a furry character. Thumper from Bambi is a furry character. Obviously all the characters from Beastars, Animal Crossing (non-humans), Zootopia, and pretty much all Disney properties where the main character is an animal is a furry character all involve furry characters. One thing I won’t say is a furry character are animal sidekicks that don’t talk, even though they emote like human beings, like Moana’s pig or something. Pokemon aren’t either, outside of Mystery Dungeon stuff obviously. Anything can be turned into a furry character via fanart, but canonically, let’s just say they’re not. This is probably the funkiest part of furry-ness but yeah, I honestly think the one threshold that separates “furry” from “non-furry” is whether or not they talk. I don’t know what it is, it just feels like characters that talk cross the line. It’s basically a nonsense term that can be whatever you make it anyway so who cares, but that’s how I’ll be thinking about it. Also, I’ll never use the term “furry” in a derogatory sense. I’ve never really thought of it as being anything other than a descriptor, not anything with inherent goodness or badness to it, like calling someone a “construction worker” or something. Also “scalies” are just “furries” under another name. Reptiles are still furry as far as I care.

So the age-old question, am I a “furry?” Honestly I think I’m not, because even though I do obviously like furry characters, it’s not like a super big part of my likes. I basically just like good character design and appealing characters, some of which are furry. If I became a “furry” just for that, millions of other people would then become “furry,” basically making the term useless.

Doesn’t really matter though, I just wanna talk about furry character design, because it’s a seriously mixed bag. It’s like a bag filled with lettuce, marbles, and volcanic rock. That’s probably the reason why so many people are into it, since it gives characters a relatable anchor (animals) but can shoot them off in so many different directions that there’s inevitably something for everyone. You can either choose to make them basically humans with animal heads, like in Beastars, super magical and cute like in My Little Pony, or… whatever’s going on with Sonic characters.

I feel like the over-under of “good” furry character design is tweaking the biology of the animal in question without straying too far, and if you do go far, then it’s either relevant to the story of the character or just a thing with all furry characters in the world. For example, horses aren’t pink. But, in My Little Pony, they are, because horses can be any color, and so on. And, ya know, apart from that, just the usual character design stuff, like good color use and whatnot. Frankly the stuff I hate most about “bad” furry design is just “bad” character design, and not really relevant to the furry-ness of the character. It’s just cherry-picked correlation, not actual causation. Human characters can be just as bad as furry characters, there’s just a lot less to change in humans, so some people think the openness of furry design causes bad design when there’s just a lot more left up to the creator.

To be honest I think the pinnacle of furry character design is Zootopia. I feel like one of the big things people like to do is associate people/character traits with animals, like thinking someone’s a weasel for being super cunning and witty, or if someone’s a lion for being super powerful-feeling and proud. Zootopia, I think, manages to not only represent that in the structure and stature of its characters, but really implant a human face on to an animal. When you look at a Zootopia character, you can almost see someone you know in that face. Maybe that’s just standard in most cases, but it feels really present here. As for the character traits of animals, obviously it’s kinda rich pointing that stuff out in a story explicitly going against all that, but in terms of visual design I think we should think of the associated traits of an animal and pair that with their actual biology to an extent. For example, the ungulate characters have pretty thick bodies with thin legs with really pronounced knees. You know, like ungulates. They don’t have human proportions because they’re basically just animals with the stature and culture of humans. I think Nick is one of the big examples of a really easy and good trait to have in furry characters, that being having pretty short legs relative to a long body. 

Humans have really, really long legs compared to everything else. That’s why no one walks on all fours on the soles of their feet, because our arms are so much smaller than our legs, meaning we have to shuffle along on our knees. Animal legs are different. Also, just basic things like size difference and such are basically a given. Rabbits are small. Water buffalo are big. Shrews are even smaller than rabbits. For the most part, you shouldn’t stray too far from basic size differences. Obviously Nick probably would be a bit taller than he is in that case, but since he’s a protagonist he kinda gets a more limited pallet for the sake of wider appeal.

Also, one of the big things about Zootopia that really makes it the best is how society adapts to different biologies. Zootopia itself is so goddamn colorful and diverse, because even the most diverse cities in the real world are only gathering up people of different skin colors, ethnicities, locations, etc. Zootopia has to account for so many different biologies, and the designers really didn’t limit themselves there. Even little things like food stands having a little elevator to get drinks up to giraffe-height really make the world. Obviously they would separate the different biomes, but each biome still having bizarre little bits of technologies in it makes it amazing.

So with that all said, I must hate Beastars, right? I mean, they’re just humans with fur and animal heads. Well, I’m just as surprised as you are, because I actually kinda didn’t mind it as much as I thought. Obviously I’d take a Zootopia over a Beastars any day, but it wasn’t really that bad for character design purposes. Other critiques aside. I mean, the one big thing of size difference is still there, so it doesn’t feel completely lost that these are all animals with different biologies. Plus, I think the big thing is that their animal parts are still very animalistic, and not the usual “furry” design liberties, and that they at least extend well downward into their human parts. For example, in the first episode, that one parrot girl really caught my eye because she still looked like a parrot. What we could see of her arm still looked parrot-like. But, then, what about everyone else who basically is just a furry human with an animal head? 

One of the big, BIG things that turns me off with most furry media is how serious things are. They’re talking animals, Jim. I get you want them to have a super edgy backstory with tons of death and trauma but they’re animals. My brain can’t just shake that thought, and since a lot of my least favorite stuff is super edgy and etc I just get turned off to the idea. Movies like Zootopia fix that by being like “Haha, talking animals am I right guys? Oh by the way there’s a government-funded drug cartel trying to frame carnivores as monsters in order for herbivores to rise above them in power.” If the makers toy with the idea of talking animals being funny/cute/fantastical/etc, then they can implant the serious seeds that make a good story. Things like the Warrior Cats series (my sister’s brand) don’t feel like they strike that chord before they go on to tell a super serious story, so I get lost in the mess (Or at least that’s how fan works seem to go, I’ll probably never read the original books, let’s be real. If they’re not like that then just imagine that as being a critique of fan works). So, what about Beastars? I feel like making the animals so human is absolutely necessary in telling their serious story. Plus, since the animal parts are so much like actual animals, it feels much more like “this is a character represented by an animal” instead of “this is a talking animal” sort of thing. By not making things so cartoonish, they can tell a less cartoonish story. I’m still not super into it but it does work. I’m into cartoons as a whole tho, so I’ll always take cartoons over basically anything else. 

 Now, I want to talk about hands. Choosing whether to give a furry character hands is the turning point in design philosophy. Obviously mammals are probably going to have hands no matter what, because we associate most with them, and they kinda-sorta have fingers, but what about fish? Finding Nemo characters… sort of have hands? They will definitely try to pick things up as much as possible (i.e. Marlin caressing Nemo’s egg) but they don’t actually “grab” things. But, sure, their fins can feel like hands to a human because they’re sorta-kinda in the same location. 

What about wings? Guardians of Ga'hoole has probably the greatest furry bird character design of all time. I HATE it when character designers try to turn feathers into fingers. Probably exclusively because of this movie, but still. I can’t praise this movie enough for sticking to its guns in not only keeping an owl’s actual claws as its hands, and wings only staying something secondary for gestures and stuff, but also for designing WEAPONS for OWLS. Again, they are talking animals, but like… They transcended the thought of it being funny and cute and instead led us into thinking they’re totally badass, because, let’s be honest, birds are probably the most badass of all animals. They fly, have sharp hunting skills, a piercing gaze… and, ya know, are descendents of dinosaurs. They can even be super cute if need be. Did I mention they can fly? That’s like their main thing that mostly only they can do. Not sure if you’ve heard, but flying’s pretty cool. But, yeah, whatever, keeping a bird’s hands to its claws is basically necessary I’d say, unless you want to go the Sonic route and not even give them wings in the first place. 

What about something that doesn’t even have limbs? Snakes are even more bonkers than birds. If an alien came to Earth and the first thing they saw was a snake slithering around they’d probably pack up and leave because their petty minds weren’t vast enough to imagine a thing moving so elegantly and so, like clandestine-ly? Like, just by looking at them, you really can’t imagine how the hell they move. Anyways, this is starting to turn into me gushing about animals… We all have seen that one tweet of that one rattlesnake character from Rango being called one of the coolest character designs, and by golly they’re totally right. Snakes are a place for character designers to flex their imaginary muscles because of how weird they are. What if we get a snake, but… instead of a rattle (which is already a crazy biological feature let’s be real) let’s give him a prosthetic GATLING GUN instead. And also like a gigantic-rimmed hat. That is unreasonably cool. Again, snakes are badass, so instead of having to convince us that it’s all fun and games they can very easily be like “Don’t mess with that guy, he’s a snake” and pull out some seriousness from that.  But, as the internet will surely convince you, snakes are also weirdly cute sometimes. Sometimes so cute you have a crisis of faith. Back to Ga'hoole, the nursery mother snake character there might just be one of the cutest snake characters ever. I still hold true that adults can be as cute as children/young people in the right circumstances, and she is a prime example of that. Also, can we just talk about Viper from Kung Fu Panda? Good God, what a character. I can imagine the board meeting: “Okay so we want a lovable cast of characters that do Kung Fu. We got the main Panda, a Tiger, a Crane, a Snake, a Praying Mantis, a…” “Wait, a SNAKE? How the hell are we supposed to make a snake do Kung Fu?” and then they fucking NAILED it. Not only is she a total cutie pie, but she has some of the best design direction of that entire, amazing franchise. Really, AAA western animation studio furry design is almost always killer. 

Now I want to talk about Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic is easily the Chaotic Evil of furry character design. What the fuck even are they? Imagine starting up a video game company and hearing this one guy come up to you like “I’ve got this game about a blue hedgehog with super speed and one weird inter-connected eyeball and gloves and he collects golden rings and turns Super Saiyan if he picks gets some magical gems” and suddenly he becomes the face of your entire company. I have no idea where all that came from. But, guess what? I still love it. I have no idea why, but it’s great. I mean, even apart from the usual things people say about him, like having a good silhouette and junk. Maybe he’s just been so ingrained in our society that it’s basically Stockholm syndrome, but I do like Sonic characters. I think the only issue I have with the character designs is that some are a little too similar in the face/body (I think Espio and Charmy should look a little stranger imo), but for the most part they’re great. It’s even really refreshing when you do get some character that strays from the normal body type, like Big the Cat, Vector, or that one grey hawk guy from Sonic Riders. My favorite of the games is Cream and Cheese, mainly because she’s a cute rabbit with a Chao (the best part of the Sonic franchise hands-down) but I think the “best” from all forms of media is Tangle from the comics. She has the necessary gumption and sportiness you’d expect from a sonic character, while still looking interesting, but not looking too out of left-field, and also having a super iconic and relevant trait (a giant, fluffy tail. Gotta love those) that has a unique use. One day they will make a game using the comic characters and that day shall be a glorious day. I seriously think the art of the comics is amazing, even though I haven’t actually read much of it myself. I’d definitely give it a shot if given the chance though.

Although, you really can’t talk about furry characters without mentioning porn at least a little bit. At this point it kinda forgoes design and is just a personal preference sort of thing, as you’d probably expect. Porn’s like that. But really, for me, I think any kind of non-human genitalia is actually disgusting. Literally, any excuse to put human dicks on something is a good one. I’m not gonna go into detail, but wouldn'tcha believe some people genuinely are into the idea of having large, human-sized breasts in the same areas as a normal animal’s nipples, i.e. around their hind legs? I mean, anything’s possible, but it’s just… yeah… No. I don’t even want to talk about the various shapes of animal “anatomy.” It’s not fun, and the less I have to think about it the better I am. Obviously if a character’s human enough it’s fine, but I just can’t stand the biology of some of it. Like, how would you fuck a snake? How do they even do it in the first place? My brain just doesn’t conceive of it, and as such it’s not in my purview. But, one things for sure, you are NOT a zoophile for liking furry porn (even if the characters in question don’t stand up on two legs). That’s an entirely different beast, and it’d be nice if people stop pretending like it’s at all relevant here.

The last thing that’s sort of a preferential thing for me is toe beans. I just can’t stand them. It’s like one step below nauseating for me, and I have no idea why. It makes it infinitely harder to enjoy furry stuff because of it, because it seems people are universally for them, both in a weirdly pornographic sense, and in just a cuteness sense. Even the cutest possible depictions of toe beans still make me want to shrivel up inside. Maybe that’s why I like rabbits so much… They’re too fluffy to show them, whether or not they actually have them in the first place.

But yeah, furries. Of course I have a fursona. He’s been in the works for ages because I never feel like I can get him exactly right. Chances are he’ll break off into a separate character like my last attempt.