Dignify this, buddy!
2004-02-03 21:47![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chipotleI was bumbling around Yahoo! Groups the other day and came across a group called the "Dignified Furs." Allrighty then, I thought. A little exploration showed the most recent messages to be--and I know this will surprise all of you in the fandom--mournful complaints about the state of the fandom. Having nothing better to do, I dived into the muck and did a little raking there, chiefly with a gentleman who seemed to be arguing that furry fandom was small and pathetic and smut-oriented compared to anime fandom and comics fandom and what-have-you fandom. Now, setting aside the cries of "hentai! yaoi!" aside, there's a surface truth to it--within the last 15 years, anime has burst onto the mainstream and the fandom has grown exponentially. The red herring here, in my book, has nothing to do with pornography: it has to do with the fact that anime fandom exists because of a huge body of work created outside the fandom. So does comics fandom and Trek fandom and most other what-have-you fandoms. Sure, those fandoms are old enough that people have in fact moved from fan to professional--but furrydom is unique in that the majority of its content is fan-created.
But, my erstwhile opponent chose to ignore this central point of the argument, and to mostly ignore examples I trotted out of creative people and companies within the fandom. My last response--which may well be my last one--was this short piece.
On Feb 3, 2004, at 10:55 AM, Erstwhile Opponent wrote:
Creativity without focus isn't creativity. There are plenty of wanna-be creators in the fandom who, let's face it, haven't moved on because they simply couldn't survive outside the fandom. The fandom has always been focused on artwork, you see a heck of a lot of people who want to be artists but couldn't really draw to save their lives. Creativity and talent are two different things.
Okay, I'm calling your bluff here. Your definition of furry seems to include "cannot be creative," so there's really no point in looking for any silver linings, is there? Dark Natasha, Susan Van Camp, Heather Alexander, Heather "Kyoht" Baeder, Michael Raabe, Shawn Kellner, Herbie Bearclaw, Goldenwolf, Terrie Smith, Michael Payne, John Nunnemacher--all undoubtedly to be explained away as either not really creative or not really furry!
If this is NOT part of your definition of furry, then stop throwing the puppy out with the bath water. Admitting that there are things of quality and worth in furry fandom doesn't mean you can't believe that there's vast room for improvement, but steadfastly denying their existence makes it appear that you're not interested in surveying the whole of what's out there--your real interest is in calling attention to what you consider sludge, and nothing else. "But there's so much of it" is not an adequate defense; one good novel in a shelf of a hundred dreadful ones is still one good novel, and an honest critic must acknowledge it.
Whether the fandom is "obsessed" with sex and whether the fandom is capable of producing creative artists and writers are two separate issues, and they are not intrinsically related. A lot of great art has been produced by people who were obsessed with sex, and sometimes pretty kinky to boot. What I think you're trying to say by scrambling those arguments together is that, for a creator, it's a much greater risk than it should be to say "I'm a furry fan." And yeah, it is. And that's unfortunate.
But the only way--the ONLY way--that's going to ever change is when people ARE willing to say it, and are willing to say, "And here's what that really means."
The Burned Furs never got this. You can't lead by crusading against the "undesirables" and get very far--you'll only polarize people. If you want to be an AM talk radio host, maybe that's all you want, because being hated just increases your ratings (at least for a while). But if you really want to lead, you do it by example. If the BFs had taken all the energy they put into pissing and moaning and ranting and mocking and put it into creating something lovely and wonderful that they could hold up and say, "This is what furry can be," maybe they'd have actually been the force for good they seemed to picture themselves as.
. . . What can be done to change [the fandom]?
Create what you would like to see more of, and promote what you would like to see more of. You're concerned about the content and quality? You can kvetch on mailing lists all you want and maybe you'll get arguments and maybe you'll get sympathetic ears, but the one thing that you won't get is a measurable effect. If you really want that, work to create, distribute and/or showcase quality content.
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Yeah, But What Has Burned Fur Done _Lately_?
Oh, wait a sec...
Re: Yeah, But What Has Burned Fur Done _Lately_?
Date: 2004-02-04 08:46 (UTC)I remember Roz Gibson observing that she knew a lot of the people who signed on as "Burned Furs" drew pornography, which was ironic given that they seemed to seek out that Porn Is Bad stance. (Although to be fair, I think their original points were more about fan behavior than fan creation, and if they'd differentiated between well-behaved "perverts" and ones with no sense of courtesy and discretion, they might have done better. Then again, maybe not.)
Re: Yeah, But What Has Burned Fur Done _Lately_?
Date: 2004-02-08 18:37 (UTC)I was in the Burned Furs from when I first read the Manifesto and Blumrich's commentary on it to when Squee torpedoed her own creaton for the helluvit. I don't remember any "Daniel Harris" on the roster.
Re: Yeah, But What Has Burned Fur Done _Lately_?
Date: 2004-02-08 20:33 (UTC)Re: Yeah, But What Has Burned Fur Done _Lately_?
Date: 2004-02-09 19:56 (UTC)It's ironic that as much as Burned Furs complained about other people's bad behavior, they've never really been particularly shining examples of good behavior themselves. Just look at Peter "Hangdog" Schorn (http://friends.portalofevil.com/fshow.php?si=3&userid=1897), for example.
These are the guys who tried to "clean up" the fandom?
Re: Yeah, But What Has Burned Fur Done _Lately_?
Date: 2004-02-09 20:22 (UTC)As for the BFs being paragons of bad behavior themselves despite the professed higher goal, I'd figured long before the group's evaporation that Squee Rat's original manifesto contained the seeds of the BF's undoing along with their doing. When your rallying cry boils down to "Fight crassness with crassness," you aren't part of the solution. (The old joke about "...you're part of the precipitate" may be particularly apt.)
Re: Yeah, But What Has Burned Fur Done _Lately_?
Date: 2004-02-10 00:46 (UTC)-Qit
Re: Yeah, But What Has Burned Fur Done _Lately_?
Date: 2004-02-09 19:35 (UTC)Your claims of poor memory don't really make for good support of your statement. A search of AFF on Google Groups (http://groups.google.com), Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org), and Burned Fur's own archived website have him listed on the roster (http://burnedfur.mv.com/whoweare.html) as a member.
It boggles the mind that I know more about Burned Furs at this point than self-professed Burned Furs know about themselves.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-03 22:59 (UTC)There's a boy dressed up like Winnie the Pooh, the poor thing. He must be pledging a fraternity or something. I choose to believe that rather than consider the possibility that one of those creepy plushies (or whatever they're called) decided to show up in fetish attire. (I just wanted to mention that because I like some variety in my crazy hate mail.)
---
Furry is hitting the mainstream, in bits and pieces. Just the fringes of furry are hitting the mainstream first - something like what would happen if you introduced the world to anime via tentacles (Urotsokidoji), say. (Although I think at least some were introduced that way.) And it is very hard to call out mainstream furry, because almost all of it is kid's stuff - Winnie the Pooh, Sonic the Hedgehog, toons in general, fursuits. In that way it's harder for people to take it seriously, I think.
I strive in my little online bubble to create quality strangeness. Although, in all likelihood, if you were going to try to remove the smut from furrydom, I'd probably be the first person you'd try to get rid of...oh well. At the very least I try to encourage the people that I think are truly doing good work, whether it's smutty or not, preferably with amounts of money, although compliments and ideas, I find, are often also welcome as long as you don't expect much back. And I think that's about all you can ask for.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-04 07:01 (UTC)I guess we need some big corporate sector to decide that we all have a lot of money and/or have an appeal that can help them sell, sell, sell. Then we'll get portrayed in a positive (or at least tolerantly bemused like the various Star Trek fandom movies) light by the REST of the corporate entities that do all the thinking for 80% of the country.
But no, I'm not bitter... :)
no subject
Date: 2004-02-04 03:17 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-04 03:37 (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-04 06:32 (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-04 08:39 (UTC)Linux has websites and forums and monthly "meetups" and conventions. Is it a fandom?
I'm not being entirely facetious. I used to think, years ago, that a problem with furry fandom was that it didn't have clearly defined edges--but I've come to believe that NO fandom has clearly defined edges. Are you an anime fan if you've seen and liked a few Miyazaki films? If you own a couple on DVD? Do you have to own a lot of them on DVD? Do you have to actually go to cons and buy bad fan dubs of stuff you can't get at Blockbuster? (Do you have to make bad fan dubs?)
Fandom, like pornography, is something you know when you see--and the corollary, that rational people are going to draw that line differently from one another, holds just as true for any fandom as well.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-04 17:37 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-04 06:40 (UTC)I'm only a whole lot jealous that random negative nut-job get pages and pages of attention via people attacking and supporting them, when the stuff I spend hours working on gets ignored or a RAEBNC. It's negative attention, but it's better than nothing. I wish a few more people were like Kylee, who seems able to praise for paragraphs a piece of artwork, when most people say "oh, I'd be to embarrassed to go on like that."
I've written, I draw, I've been editor of an APA, I'm heavily involved in at least one convention. I make what I want and try to mould the things I'm involved with towards more of what I'd like to see. I'd like to see these mouthpieces do some of that. Don't like the state of things, they shouldn't be bitching about what other people do, they should be leading by example. However it's much easier to be critical than create, and destroy rather than do.
Mad props for standing up, and calling out the flaws in their argument. Recognize that they are basically parasites, if they're more known for how they criticize others than their own body of work, they have no substance when the other people are removed from the picture.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-04 07:13 (UTC)Tangentially, I'd like to add that the worst (by far) of the material we receive in the Anthrolations slushpile comes from outside the fandom. I'm still not sure if it is a simple issue of percentages or whether people in the fandom may have actually SEEN a copy of the magazine and know better than to turn in garbage, but the result is clear.
I've also been pleasantly surprised by the reaction in the mainstream, given that I was led to believe Furries were viewed as some kind of pariah cult. Mostly I got "Hey, cool! A _PAYING_ (I think is the key) talking-animal market! I've got stuff for that..." Sometimes it's even good.
Okay, enough rambling. Off to do some legitimate work.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-04 07:24 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-04 07:24 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-04 07:54 (UTC)As for mainstream, well, the question asked is an appropriate one: what exactly is Furry? And for that matter, how do you define 'mainstream'? That was a rhetorical question, of course. I've run across several definitions since I first joined this fandom about a year and a couple months ago. I could go on several long rambling philosophical tangents about this subject, but won't, since this is getting long enough. But to me, Furry first hit the mainstream roughly 70 or so years ago when a mouse piloted a steamboat down a river. The rest, as they say, is history. Yes, the vast majority of what the public knows and accepts is cartoons, which I think for some people makes it easier to accept/tolerate/ignore/whatever. Although I'm not quite sure why people think of cartoons as being "kid's stuff". Hell, Bugs Bunny and co. was originally never intended for kids, it was all aimed at adults. That kids rather enjoyed it as well was pretty quickly picked up and pounced on like a pack of wild dogs on a three-legged cat (that's really not a bad analogy for many international corporations, I think). There's just so much more to Furry than just that. So. We have cartoons, and we have fursuiters being featured on ER and CSI. We also have our own channel, Animal Planet (yes, I know it's not about the fandom, but hell, it's a 24-hour channel devoted to animals. I think it counts). The rest will, slowly but surely, seep out there. What we need are, as Chipotle said, leaders, and we also need to, as Brerandalopex pointed out, make ourselves known as both a force with money to spend, and a force that can cause other people to spend more money. It won't be done by E.M.O. Esq., however. It will be done by Dark Natasha and others, and a very good friend of mine who also is an artist (he drew my avatar here) who seeks to get into the animation industry. Say what you will about love, it's money that greases the wheels, and if the wheels don't turn, neither does the planet. I say, placate EO and other Burned Furs so they will settle down and get out of the way, and let whatever leaders we have have the room to make themselves shine. I'm sure in another 50 years, Paul Harvey III will be telling 'the rest of the story' about Furry.
And if you really want to get picky, as far as I'm concerned, Furry was not only approved, but made into a religion a long time ago, when some king decided the Nile really needed some pyramids next to it. Maybe we can have that again. Who knows? At the very least, it's worth a story.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-04 17:55 (UTC)Not that either of these things denote the mass Furrification of the country's population, but I do think that a great many things have become more available than they used to be. (Especially in terms of the Internet.)
One question...
Date: 2004-02-10 00:43 (UTC)-Qit
Re: One question...
Date: 2004-02-10 08:19 (UTC)But, the 'dignified furs' mailing list that started this little thread is new and current. If the questions being batted around on it are similar to the ones the BFs posed in their moments of lucidity, it's because the questions are still around. Does bad press reduce the chance of things identified (let alone self-identified) as being associated with "furry" being widely accepted by people who aren't furry? Or is all publicity good publicity? The question behind those that caught me, though, was: just what do we mean by acceptance, anyway?
no subject
Date: 2004-02-17 11:04 (UTC)I don't require acceptance as a beer drinker; I don't care too much whether an individual walking along the street likes the same kind of beer I do. The existence of what I consider to be bad beer doesn't particularly reflect on the goodness of the beer I drink; I don't feel the need to apologize for it.
What one might need to apologize for is on the other hand being a sloppy drunk in public. Isn't it perhaps more about behavior than anything else?