Do you remember when and what helped you discover your affinity for furries? If you do, I’d like to hear your stories!
To get the ball rolling I’ll start with mine. While I certainly can’t pinpoint the exact date I became fixated on anthros, I can absolutely remember getting Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast when I was 7 or 8 (2000ish).
Seeing Tails was all I needed to get hooked, and want to be a cool fox like him. I didn’t even have a word for it until I started using the internet years later, but my furry fate was sealed from then onward. It was the catalyst that got me into fantasizing about having fur and a big tail, and got me doodling lots of Sonic art as a kid. While I’ve long since stopped making Sonic art, Tails still holds a special place in my heart over 20 years later.
My anthro awakening was Blacksad, but i circled around the furry fandom for years and years before joining last year.
Circa 2010 i was feverishly googling “tiger girl” looking for pictures of elvish girl in the forest with her pet tiger, you know, that kind of fantasy art; and i found some obscure forum where someone posted a furry drawing of a tiger girl, and someone commented ‘can someone please draw a furry that isn’t trying to be sexy’, and i’m like ‘what’s a furry’
But even just that anecdote already hints at why i didn’t join the fandom: there was less SFW furry content back then, and i was a lot more prudish. Both have changed since.
So, you know, on the list of things i could/should have done ten years ago, there’s that.