How do you discover the furry fandom?

[Cerebus]

my story is i was looking for the three headed dog Cerberus "at the time i just put down Cerebus" and found Littie Blue Wolf artwork site and see links to yiffstar and that got me started off!

tell us your story 

[Matt the Lion]

I'm not sure exactly, it's quite a while ago and I never really made a point of remembering, but I do recall that it mostly started from looking for stuff related to the Lion King movie; I wanted video clips and sound-bites, but ended up coming across the various bits of fanart and fan fiction on the web.... it all went from there really I think.

[LevLion]

Furr wasnt as big as it is now, it was back in the Early 90's when i started to find furry things. Although since i was a cub I have loved furry things. But after TLK as most people tlak about I got into it more online and met lots of fans which lead on to furs and by the mid to late 90's I was attending meets down in london (the only ones in the UK at that time) on a regular basis.

[Exiled Wolf]

Now we're looking back some ways, easily 3 or 4 years (Eeep, is it really that long???). I call the internet, role playing on said internet and "offline" (RL and Compy) and too much free time as the main causes of me finding furry. Roleplaying was probably the main thing that lead me to furry. Following links through online roleplay sites and the suchlike led to artwork, stories and eventually a link to the NorthernFurs site. That's how it began. By 2005 I was pretty regular at attending NorthernFurs meets, and that's been pretty much the same. How it ends...I hope not to find out any time soon 

[Shep]

The short answer:

I was looking online for cartoons of German Shepherd police dogs for a presentation I was doing in 2001 when I was still in the police force. I found them, and more besides...

Ask me for the long answer

[Lilsi]

Well i first saw furry on CSI, i liiked the episode apart from the 'furpile' i thought that was weird.
But i forgot all about it and about a year later i was doing course work on subcultures and i found a diary
of a guy who had fallen in love with his dog    and it had a link to ukfur. After some...alot of research into the fandom i decided i would join.

I had always had a connection to wolves before that and i always drew myself as an anthro wolf even before i knew about the fandom. I also collected plushies! so it all kinda worked in together. 

[The Dark Knight]

Copied from the UKFur forum:

Oh jeez... this might take a while. *lights a pipe*

Firstly please forgive me if I ramble here, I can't recall everything specifically.

From what I can remember of my childhood there was a lot of cartoons on which had anthro characters in them: Around the world with Willy Fog, Teenage Mutant Hero/Ninja Turtles, Dangermouse, The Dreamstone, Bucky o'Hare, The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, etc.
Back then I really only had two good friends (I was very much a loner) and we used to roleplay as characters from the cartoons we watched every single day. As we got older my friends grew out of roleplaying, but I didn't. I still loved the idea of being a crime-fighting wolf/fox/feline/whatever protecting the innocent and kicking arse. I took to drawing characters from Sonic the Comic and then started developing my own, but as I grew into adolescence and I started to lose the fine dexterity in my fingers I stopped.

Fast forward through High School to year 10. I'd met a person that some of you might know, Blue Phoenix, through some RPG friends of mine. We started talking and got on quite well with each other and soon after that she introduced me to meditation. It was through this, on my first venture into my pocket realm, I discovered that I am a werewolf. It was even more interesting when I couldn't stop walking on my toes for a full hour after I'd finished.
I needed to know more, so I went to the local video store and rented as many werewolf films as I could, as well as borrowing my friend's "Werewolf: The Apocolypse" books to read. I already had an interest in costumes at this point and decided to look on the internet for "werewolf costumes".
Most of the sites and pictures I found were really tacky fancy dress costumes, but one website stuck out: the website for Haunted Verdun Manor. It was a walk-around haunted house with actors, some of which actually wore amazingly detailed werewolf costumes. I was enthralled and made a vow to myself that I would one day have a costume of that quality.

After a little more searching I found the personal website of one of the guys who worked there. I'm not going to name him as... well you'll see why further on.
I spent about a week following link after link from his site and amassed a great deal of info in my head about "furry". I had found kindred spirits, which made me amazingly happy.
I decided to send an email to the guy, introducing myself. Unfortunately his reply was... less than civil. It made me think that the Furry Fandom was an elitest club. I spent two weeks after that rethinking everything and in the end I stuffed my true self into a little ball inside of me. That was possibly the most depressing point of my life.

About a month of so later I was back on the internet again and I stumbled onto TimmyPup's website and decided to email him. The response I got from him was a helluva lot better than the one from the above guy, and Tim convinced me to go to an LF meet. The was really the start of my presence in the fandom.

That's all about how I discovered furry, but I'm on a roll here so I'm gonna keep going!

Fast forward to FC2005. I'd already been to three fur cons (AC02, FC03, AC03) and was enjoying my second FC. I was also friends with Ysengrin on LJ. Ysengrin used to work and live at Haunted Verdun Manor, along with his partner DarkFang, when it was still operating under Lance Pope.
Now at the time I was trying to find anyone who knew where I could get an Action Packer (large plastic container, very rugged) from so that I could take my fursuit back to England on the plane with me. I wandered into one of the fursuit panels to see Ysengrin sat at the table talking about fursuit performance, to which he regaled some tales of Verdun Manor. Afterwards I approached him and after introducing myself and taking a look at his fursuit head I asked him if he knew where I could find an Action Packer. Not only did he tell me where, but he and DarkFang drove me to the place to get one!

After FC I kept in contact with the two of them and feelings started coming back from my teenage years, the werewolf inside me was breaking out of the shell I had kept him in. Soon after I accepted what I am and after spending FC2006 with them I decided to commission them to make me a werewolf fursuit, and on Halloween last year I took ownership of it. I'm now a member of their pack and I really couldn't be happier to have finally found them. Now all I need to do is move to America. XD

Phew! All done now.
If anyone has any questions or wants anything cleared up then please ask. Again, apologies if I rambled.

[Tori Belliachi]

All I'll say is Scooby Doo and fetish artwork.

>.>

[Wolfie Fox]

I need to take a break now after reading your post, Graafen

[Shema]

Also copied from the ukFur forums:

I always used to pretend I was a dog when I was younger to play with my dog Sam. I used to enjoy it so much and also when I was small every wish I ever made was "I wish I was a cat". I was facinated with the way they moved and wanted to be one.

Now, I am sure most children pretend to be animals and such, but my wish carried on with me as I grew up. I loved the Lion King and after seeing The Lion King 2, my feelings for wanting to be feline grew even stronger. However, because I was 13 years old it would have seemed silly for me to 'pretend' to be a lion, crawling on the floor as I did when I was younger, but the only way that I could was to play with my cat, or dog (that way it didn't seem so bad to everyone else).

I also tried to pretend when walking home from school that I was walking with big paws (though on two legs of course). In my mind I would wonder if anyone else shared the same thoughts with me or anything or if I was just odd. I never told anyone. But when I pretended I was this lion I would feel so free, warm, comfortable and .. sort of in touch with nature, I think is the only way to describe it. It made me so happy.

I don't know how I came across it, but I found The Lion King Fanart Archive (TLKFAA). I would occationally browse the site and also Neopets. I noticed on TLKFAA that people had characters to represent themselves. I thought that this was such a fantastic idea and because I had always felt like a lion and wanted to be one I started designing my own character. By this time I had already met Snoblissea a couple of years back, but I didn't know he was also furry yet.

Then one day I drew Shema. I put a picture of her on MSN and was talking to Sno. He asked about the picture and I explained that she was my 'character' which I draw to represent me. He also had a picture of an Orca in his display picture and said "This is my character too!". I was like O_O. I think at that point he asked if I was furry, but I had no idea what he was talking about. He pointed me towards some web sites that explained it but it made me a bit nervous at first, as I was worried that it was just some wierd fettish, or something.

As the months went on though I started to understand furry more. My art was improving further and Sno and I became ever closer. It took me a while to actually classify myself as furry, but now that I understand it more I understand myself more and why, now that I am 20 years old, I STILL wish I was feline. It just makes sense to me now

...

THE END xD


I am now more into the furry fandom then Sno is. I drag him to furmeets and conventions xD

[Avalanche]

Also, also copied from the UKFur boards

Can't really go into details myself as some parts are a mystery to even myself, my memory is like swiss cheese tongue.gif I've always had a love for anthropomorphic animals via watching cartoons and animated films. Disney's Robin Hood is my favourite film of all time.

Over the last year or so i started reading some stories online that including people putting on 'animal costumes' but i didnt know they were called fursuits (cant remember what actually got me to start reading them). I became interested in the idea of becoming an animal for a few hours and messing about. The air of anonymity around wearing a fursuit was one thing that interested me as im a very closed in shy person, so i'd be able to mess about without anyone knowing who i was.

Eventually i found out that they were called fursuits, so i went onto youtube and did a search for them. The first video i watched was the 2005 disneyland fursuiting video. Before the end of that video i said to myself "i wanna do that". Found the term 'furry' read about what a furry is etc.. and realised that i was one too. After a month or two, i joined this forum and the rest, as they say, is history.

I have been saying i sort of stumbled across the video which is part true as i was searching for videos that contained fursuits in.

[Damon Blackpaw]

I've always been interested in cartoon animals and real animals. When I was growing up, even into my teens, there was always one or two certain cartoons that I was just absolutely obsessed with and couldn't get enough of.

In 1996 (when my family got internet access at home), the "obsession" I had was with Gargoyles. I was an active participant in the online Gargoyles fandom for several years, and attended the 2001 and 2003 Gathering of the Gargoyles. Sometime around 1999, I became more aware that there was a fandom out there that was interested in anthropomorphics in general. For a while, I just looked at furry art and really didn't do anything else furry related, but in 2000-2001, I started participating in aspects of the fandom other than art.

While at the 2001 Gathering, I was hanging out with a couple friends at the con, and I had made some preliminary plans to attend MFF 2001. I wasn't able to go though, so my first furry con would have to wait until AnthroCon 2002. Later that year, a friend of mine let me wear one of his fursuits at a party, and at that point, I knew I had to get one of my own.

I started building one, but I never finished it... so in 2004, I comissioned a head from LatinVixen and made my own hand and footpaws, so I would have a partial suit for AC2004. Later that year, LV sold her Sammy Samoyed suit (Ryngs Rakune made the head, Jax made the handpaws and LV made the rest), so I pounced on it. ^^ Sammy is semi-retired now though... I want to get a new body suit for him, since the old one is wearing out.

Later, I comissioned another suit from LV (My Jenna suit), and I got her at FC2006. When I have the money I will be getting more fursuits too. You can never have too many fursuits.

[The Dark Knight]

You can never have too many fursuits.

Never!

[Wolfie Fox]

I'll tell my story later, it's long too but I'm tired

[Blaster2]

By pure chance!!!

I was using ICQ, and I hit the "Find random chat partner" button. I got a person called Lupus McCloud, who showed me a picture of him and Spiked Punch. I asked "Where did he get that suit??" He then gave me Spiked's ICQ number, we got chatting about all this, he sent me a couple of fursuit patterns, and voila, the Blaster 1 suit was born and I hit the scene!!