Like or hate Furry Comics?

[Prettydragoon]

and I would hope you're not sexually fetishizing fruit.

Not really. I don't think there's anything really 'sexy' in the comic.

...fruit with boobs... now that's a stupid mental image.

Yes, that would go pear-shaped pretty fast.

[Vulpeslibertas]

...fruit with boobs... now that's a stupid mental image...
...Yes, that would go pear-shaped pretty fast.

Are you guys talking about melons? Do we really need to drag fruit fetishes and bad puns into this whole furball?

[Mandaliet]

for most people, "furry" is pretty much synonymous with disgusting fetish pornography involving animal-like characters.

I hope not, because that means most people are horribly ignorant and don't try very hard to learn about things. People who think that severely annoy me, and I'm not sure why; I'm not even a furry. However, furry art does appeal to me. I selected the "it depends" option, thinking that the person's style of art doesn't have a great deal to do with how much I like the comic, but then I remembered that a big reason why I like comics such as The End of Things is that I like looking at the characters. Humans are kind of boring, as they mostly look similar. If you add fantasy characters into the mix, you get a lot more variety and I think things are more fun to look at.

I think discussing furries is difficult because there are so many different definitions that people have, and often they think their definition is the only one. From my understanding, a "furry", when used by a "furry fan", is used for any animal with human characteristics or vice versa. Outside of the furry fandom, "furry" has no use in this context and refers to a furry fan. Anthropomorphism means giving human characteristics to anything at all, so when you yell at your computer for crashing, you're anthropomorphizing it, you disgusting fetishist.

[McDuffies]

My definition of forry would be "sexually active antropomorphic characters".
What I mean is, Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny can't be furries because they aren't concieved as sexually active people. They aren't anatomically correct. Stick boobs to a female character and you're one step closer to furries. Put clothes on them with suggestion that there are visible genitals under those clothes and that's furry.
Well this would imply that furry as a genre is defined by sexual content of the comic and that it is closely related to dreaded furry porn, but I don't think that's bad or degrading. So American underground comics were born from pornographic comics, so what.

I like furry comics on case-to-case basis. Sometimes, antropomorphic nature has it's appeal, sometimes it looks like pathetic attempt to draw attention. I do hate when webcomic officially declares itself as "furry", when they replace "humans" with "furries" and "sex" with "yiff" in conversation, etc. That always seems like they're trying to stick themselves into some sort of ghetto.
Which is, I think, the reason why people don't like them. Mind those who think that furry = bestiality, they are out of their mind. But when someone intentionally distances themselves from you and starts making new words that are for their use only, you do start disliking them, isn't that right? I don't like or hate furry comics more than others, but when they declare their "furriness" as a sort of ideology, as the sole reason why I should read their comic - that's where the dislike comes from.

I didn't follow thoroughly the discussion about whether there should be an exact reason for furry characters, but I think I'll have to disagree with Keff and Zwuh. Simply, you're making it sound like making comics is an exact science and everything has to have it's reason.
True thing is that when author makes such decisions as what his character designs will be like, he has in mind the vision of what his comic will look like. But as artists you know that much of those decisions are made instinctually, that you value your artistic sence more than any kind of reasoning. There doesn't have to be a reason for putting in furry comics, other than that the author feels that it's right.

Comics are as you know a visual medium. But narration usually imposes a lot of dialogue and static scenes, things that stick like a sore thumb and usually look boring. Furry characters are one way of freshening the look of the comic, specially if this comic has a lot of dramatic content as oposed to action content.
Furry characters also mean a degree of instant characterisation. I'm always inclined to believe that what attracts people to furry comics is actual animal characteristics that they find in people. A cat-girl might be attractive to you because it reminds you of a certain kind of girls that do have cat-like qualities. As I said, comics are visual medium, and this is an efficient way to bring out characterisation - something that is in it's nature non-visual - to the visual level.
In the end, antropomorphic animals have a long and honorable tradition, it's one of traditions that are almost endemic to comics and it's close relative animation. Like superheroes, comic authors will want to cling to it because it's something of the heritage of their chosen art.

Furry element, of course, affects the way you read the content. But it's not always the influence that you can put into "pro" and "con" arguement. Given reasons above, it sounds like furries are an actual logical choice for large group of comics and that you'd actually have to go and find "justifications" to why to put humans instead. But that wouldn't be right either because I think that's a gray area.
Basically what I'm trying to say, let's think of a comic and decide whether it's supposed to be drawn in realistic or caricatural tone. We realise that based on that one choice we get a completely different comic because the tone of the comic is affected by drawing style so much. The comic itself is not "caricatural" nor "realistic", it gets it's nature only when the drawing style is chosen - true, one of the choices might be suitable better for certain kinds of scripts, but in general, scripts aren't "caricatural" or "realistic" by default.
Similarly, I don't think that we can say that comics are "human" by nature and that you need to have a strong reason to push them in "furry" direction. They exist in between all artistic choices until those choices have been made.

It reminds me of the thread "How far would you go" that I made some time ago. Everyone's answer was "I'd do explicit sex as long as there was purpose for it" but it seemed like most of people didn't have a purpose for it right now, and even if I asked them to define hypothetically what the purpose was, I don't think I'd get many direct answers. Basically, my conclusion was that whether you're going to show explicit sex or not is more a matter of your temperament, artistic preferations, your attitudes. In most of cases, you could tell the same story, without sex or with sex, and even though those would be two different stories, they'd be equally effective based on your artistic skills. The actual reason why you included/excluded sex is basically whether you as artist wanted to do a story with or without sex. Some will, of course, be unkeen to admit that they felt like drawing sex, so will hide it behind some "greater purpose".

Similarly with furries. I think we all want to sound serious and to claim that our artistic choices are a subject of some serious internal debate and strong reasoning, as to make our work seem more serious. But artist is nothing if he doesn't follow his hunch. Artist's output is defined by his likes and dislikes, his interest, temper, his taste, many things that he can't control by strong editorial decisions. Art is nothing if it's not personal, if it's not a reflection of the mind and soul of it's artist. Someone said that watching a movie is like talking to a director and that you'll like a movie based on how much you'd like director's personality. Therefore, if artist likes furries, that's the reason enough to put them in his comic.

[Dr Legostar]

most people are horribly ignorant and don't try very hard to learn about things.

that's a pretty accurate statement.

[Zwuh]

Humans are kind of boring, as they mostly look similar.

If the humans in your comic look similar then you're just not a good enough artist yet. Real humans usually have no such issues.

[The Neko]

Oddly enough, I think humans have more variation than most animals do. I can't tell two foxes or wolves apart. They all look the same to me. Whereas humans have tons of difference in facial structure, body type, hair colour, style, eye-shapes, etc. People who draw all humans to look alike are just really, really untalented or at least unobservant.

[The Neko]

you can't use that kind of reasoning to change the connotation of the word "furry" when you use it as a genre.

That was not my entire reasoning, it's not an attempt to "change" the connotation but to reassert the actual connotation, and it's not what everyone thinks.

You mean denotation.

[Jekkal]

Humans are kind of boring, as they mostly look similar.

If the humans in your comic look similar then you're just not a good enough artist yet. Real humans usually have no such issues.

... unless you're faceblind from something like Autism / Asperger's Syndrome, where you can't even tell REAL humans apart to save your life. And even among the general population, most people can't even see the differences in facial features outside of their own race with any accuracy besides determining race. But let's forget that not everyone is capable of doing that...

Ever read AzuManga Daioh and been able to tell all the different girls apart by name, even when given height, hairstyle, and breast size as a means of differentiation?

Same problem applies here.

When you have furry characters, you suddenly open up a new set of skin/fur tones, ears, tails, exotic body shapes... and that's before you get into clothing and accessories as a means of differentiation. Suddenly you can use silhouettes to dramatic effect because you've now left cues (like ears) behind that allow you to do so.

An old adage of Disney's work is that characters should be distinguishable based on the outlines of their bodies alone. Not surprisingly, Disney also dabbles in lots of furries to achieve this purpose.

[Paul Escobar]

Also perplexing, the strange misconception that many people have that "furry" automatically means "fetishist". As it was originally coined - by furry fans themselves, no less - the term "furry" simply means anthropomorphisized animals and/or the people who enjoy stories and art and what have you about such characters. The fetishist part was added on much later by those ignorant of how the fandom actually works or stupid enough to refuse to believe otherwise. That part then spread further, fed by other people's ignorance, the general tendency to judge first and actually examine later, if at all. The furry fandom itself continues to use the original, correct meaning. Continuing to use the fetishist definition when talking with furries themselves is to add connotations that are not there, continue perpetuating what a number of furry fans consider to be a negative stereotype, and builds on more from other people's ignorance.

A fetish is not necessarily sexual. Liking a comic solely because of a superficial trait like the design of the characters - that's a fetish.

That said, people get the furries = sexual kink connection because furries themselves put a metric fuckton of insane furry fetish porn on the internet, because they use stupid words like "fursona" and "yiff" in serious conversation, because they behave like "furry" is an identity-defining lifestyle, and because they have no discernible sense of humour and cry FURSECUTION when other people poke fun at those things. For all I know, it may well be a small and obnoxious minority of furries who behave like that, but they are there, and they are blatantly obvious for all to see.

Don't get me wrong, for all I care people can be as fetishistic as they like. Whatever floats your boat. But saying that those connotations do not exist in furry fandom and that people are stupid and ignorant to claim so, now that is being willfully ignorant and denying evidence.

As for the whole "animal characters make things more visually interesting" argument - you can make humans visually distinctive, too. That's simply a matter of design - look at how many manga deal with that; it's the same principle of almost symbolic character design, but with humans. What makes anthro animals interesting are the human traits we give them, not the animal traits in themselves.

As an aside, whenever I come across a webcomic whose author labels his own work "furry", in 99% of the cases his comic totally sucks. There is a handful of good "furry" comics, but very few good and/or professional comic artists ever refer to their own work as "furry".

I'm not even a furry. [...] Humans are kind of boring, as they mostly look similar.

Oh, you're a furry alright.

[JessicaRaven]

Oddly enough, I think humans have more variation than most animals do. I can't tell two foxes or wolves apart. They all look the same to me. Whereas humans have tons of difference in facial structure, body type, hair colour, style, eye-shapes, etc. People who draw all humans to look alike are just really, really untalented or at least unobservant.

well granted that's cause you're a human and aren't perceptive to the ways other animals use to tell difference between other members of their own species (different scent, different call, in some cases visual cues based on spectrums of light invisible to the human eye)

actually the differences between human facial features aren't all that difference perhaps about the difference of 0.15 of a millimeter can make one person look like a completely different person, it's just our brains are wired to notice these differences


(Animal Planet FTW)

[Zwuh]

Humans are kind of boring, as they mostly look similar.

If the humans in your comic look similar then you're just not a good enough artist yet. Real humans usually have no such issues.

Ever read AzuManga Daioh and been able to tell all the different girls apart by name, even when given height, hairstyle, and breast size as a means of differentiation?

I hope you're not suggesting we use MANGA as the human example to Furries' animal. Because it's fairly obvious and widely known that most mainstream manga and anime is incredibly shithouse at differentiating characters visually, especially female ones.

Although if you want to see a good example of making characters different without resorting to cheap tricks like "cat ears" (yes, I'm being obnoxious there) then One Piece is brilliant.

it's just our brains are wired to notice these differences

Case closed?

[Jim North]

You mean denotation.

Meh!

A fetish is not necessarily sexual. Liking a comic solely because of a superficial trait like the design of the characters - that's a fetish.

Only non-sexual definition of fetish (besides a magical component) is an obsession. Merely liking something for a superficial trait is not an obsession, therefore not a fetish.

But saying that those connotations do not exist in furry fandom and that people are stupid and ignorant to claim so, now that is being willfully ignorant and denying evidence.

Not saying the connotation doesn't exist, saying it's incorrect to apply it to all furries equally as people do.

Repeating myself is fun!

[Yeahduff]

My definition of forry would be "sexually active antropomorphic characters".
What I mean is, Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny can't be furries because they aren't concieved as sexually active people. They aren't anatomically correct. Stick boobs to a female character and you're one step closer to furries. Put clothes on them with suggestion that there are visible genitals under those clothes and that's furry.
Well this would imply that furry as a genre is defined by sexual content of the comic and that it is closely related to dreaded furry porn, but I don't think that's bad or degrading. So American underground comics were born from pornographic comics, so what.

I don't know about all that.

I like furry comics on case-to-case basis. Sometimes, antropomorphic nature has it's appeal, sometimes it looks like pathetic attempt to draw attention. I do hate when webcomic officially declares itself as "furry", when they replace "humans" with "furries" and "sex" with "yiff" in conversation, etc. That always seems like they're trying to stick themselves into some sort of ghetto.
Which is, I think, the reason why people don't like them. Mind those who think that furry = bestiality, they are out of their mind. But when someone intentionally distances themselves from you and starts making new words that are for their use only, you do start disliking them, isn't that right? I don't like or hate furry comics more than others, but when they declare their "furriness" as a sort of ideology, as the sole reason why I should read their comic - that's where the dislike comes from.

I didn't follow thoroughly the discussion about whether there should be an exact reason for furry characters, but I think I'll have to disagree with Keff and Zwuh. Simply, you're making it sound like making comics is an exact science and everything has to have it's reason.
True thing is that when author makes such decisions as what his character designs will be like, he has in mind the vision of what his comic will look like. But as artists you know that much of those decisions are made instinctually, that you value your artistic sence more than any kind of reasoning. There doesn't have to be a reason for putting in furry comics, other than that the author feels that it's right.

Comics are as you know a visual medium. But narration usually imposes a lot of dialogue and static scenes, things that stick like a sore thumb and usually look boring. Furry characters are one way of freshening the look of the comic, specially if this comic has a lot of dramatic content as oposed to action content.
Furry characters also mean a degree of instant characterisation. I'm always inclined to believe that what attracts people to furry comics is actual animal characteristics that they find in people. A cat-girl might be attractive to you because it reminds you of a certain kind of girls that do have cat-like qualities. As I said, comics are visual medium, and this is an efficient way to bring out characterisation - something that is in it's nature non-visual - to the visual level.
In the end, antropomorphic animals have a long and honorable tradition, it's one of traditions that are almost endemic to comics and it's close relative animation. Like superheroes, comic authors will want to cling to it because it's something of the heritage of their chosen art.

Furry element, of course, affects the way you read the content. But it's not always the influence that you can put into "pro" and "con" arguement. Given reasons above, it sounds like furries are an actual logical choice for large group of comics and that you'd actually have to go and find "justifications" to why to put humans instead. But that wouldn't be right either because I think that's a gray area.
Basically what I'm trying to say, let's think of a comic and decide whether it's supposed to be drawn in realistic or caricatural tone. We realise that based on that one choice we get a completely different comic because the tone of the comic is affected by drawing style so much. The comic itself is not "caricatural" nor "realistic", it gets it's nature only when the drawing style is chosen - true, one of the choices might be suitable better for certain kinds of scripts, but in general, scripts aren't "caricatural" or "realistic" by default.
Similarly, I don't think that we can say that comics are "human" by nature and that you need to have a strong reason to push them in "furry" direction. They exist in between all artistic choices until those choices have been made.

It reminds me of the thread "How far would you go" that I made some time ago. Everyone's answer was "I'd do explicit sex as long as there was purpose for it" but it seemed like most of people didn't have a purpose for it right now, and even if I asked them to define hypothetically what the purpose was, I don't think I'd get many direct answers. Basically, my conclusion was that whether you're going to show explicit sex or not is more a matter of your temperament, artistic preferations, your attitudes. In most of cases, you could tell the same story, without sex or with sex, and even though those would be two different stories, they'd be equally effective based on your artistic skills. The actual reason why you included/excluded sex is basically whether you as artist wanted to do a story with or without sex. Some will, of course, be unkeen to admit that they felt like drawing sex, so will hide it behind some "greater purpose".

Similarly with furries. I think we all want to sound serious and to claim that our artistic choices are a subject of some serious internal debate and strong reasoning, as to make our work seem more serious. But artist is nothing if he doesn't follow his hunch. Artist's output is defined by his likes and dislikes, his interest, temper, his taste, many things that he can't control by strong editorial decisions. Art is nothing if it's not personal, if it's not a reflection of the mind and soul of it's artist. Someone said that watching a movie is like talking to a director and that you'll like a movie based on how much you'd like director's personality. Therefore, if artist likes furries, that's the reason enough to put them in his comic.

This, though, is about spot on.

[Paul Escobar]

But saying that those connotations do not exist in furry fandom and that people are stupid and ignorant to claim so, now that is being willfully ignorant and denying evidence.

Not saying the connotation doesn't exist, saying it's incorrect to apply it to all furries equally as people do.

Repeating myself is fun!

Nice try, but the first time around you specifically said that the fetish connotations "are not there" and that saying so "builds on [...] other people's ignorance." Now you say the connotations are there, but do not apply to all furries. Well, on that we agree.

[Rkolter]

I will say, it is throughly fun to "tweak" furries by looking aghast at them and saying, "Oh my god, you're just like those people on CSI!"

[McDuffies]

Humans are kind of boring, as they mostly look similar.

If the humans in your comic look similar then you're just not a good enough artist yet. Real humans usually have no such issues.

Artists use various means to enrich designs of their characters because if you draw them hyper-realistic, they can indeed look boring. That's why you for one exagerate certain features of your character. Some other artist does basically the same thing by adding to them features of animals. Big difference.

[Fabio Ciccone]

Now the $ 1,000,000 question:

Is "Thundercats" furry?

[Jim North]

Nice try, but the first time around you specifically said that the fetish connotations "are not there" and that saying so "builds on [...] other people's ignorance." Now you say the connotations are there, but do not apply to all furries. Well, on that we agree.

Neko already pointed out that I was mistakenly using connotation to double for both denotation and itself, which I was, so you're a bit late to the game now with this. Cheers!

And now I'm repeating Neko as well!

EDIT: Also, SEMANTICS LOL

Is "Thundercats" furry?

Yes!

No?

Maybe . . .

[Redtech]

The real question is: Who cares?

I wonder how many VGCats fans hate furries?

I am of the belief that art is the gatway to the artist's soul, but then again, some people seem to have sold theirs.