Pt. 3: How did you come across/into the furry fandom?

Which needs to be answered before we can discuss Aldin.

I could take the easy route and just say, it was around 1989 or so, while attending Plymouth State College (now University) and browsing through various groups on Usenet where I soon came across alt.fan.furry and learned of the furry fandom.

For you “youngins” for whom I could be old enough to be your father (nooooo!!!!!), if you don’t know what Usenet is, look it up. Back then the Internet was text only. “Social Media” wasn’t defined as such. If it had been, Usenet and local bulletin board systems (BBS) were your choices for social media. Access to the Internet outside of government and universities was rare. This was before the days of Usenet access through AOL or even Compuserve. On Usenet, there were a few different areas. Those groups starting with REC had to be voted into existence by the users of Usenet. One email address, one vote (and it was rare back then to have more than one email address). A group needed 100 more Yes votes than No votes to be created…usually you needed a lot more than that due to a hard core collection of anti-new group users who always voted no, no matter what the group was about. For example, at one point rec.scouting tried to split into several groups into rec.scouting.usa, rec.scouting.international, and I can’t recall the others. Not all of them survived that vote. There was a different area on Usenet that was groups starting with ALT. Alt groups didn’t need to get voted in. They simply got created. The downside is not all government sites/universities would carry alt groups. I was fortunate in that PSC did carry the alt groups. And among the groups I participated in was alt.fan.furry.

One of the topics I recall from alt.fan.furry was an extremely heated flame war around whether being transformed by science into your furry character would hurt or not. Being a science major, I was on the side of pain ‘cause of what the body would have to go through to rearrange everything to the new shape, muscle/skeletal structure, and/or size. I suggested a simple solution to this problem would be to put the patient into a medical coma for the duration of the transformation. That didn’t sit well with the other factions.

Between my age (44 as of this post) and early involvement on alt.fan.furry, I guess I qualify as a “gray muzzle” though I am not super active. Some would argue that’s not enough. Personally, I don’t care either way. Anyway, I eventually wandered away from alt.fan.furry as I graduated, headed off to an internship between undergrad and grad schools and then on to grad school.

In graduate school, I found I didn’t have as much time for Usenet. But at the same time, grad school course work was driving me insane. Then, I discovered alt.devilbunnies (http://www.devilbunnies.org) and got active in that creative writing group. It was a lifesaver for me, providing me a humorous outlet to the frustrations of graduate school. Many don’t view them as furry. You won’t find an entry for them in the wikifur webpedia, though you’ll find references to them on some people’s entries. I don’t understand why that writing group isn’t considered furry. It sentient cute bunny rabbits, sentient squirrels and giant ferrets (at one time). Sure, those cute widdle bunny wabbits had sharp fangs and claws like the rabbit in Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail and there were humans thrown in, but that was part of the humor of it. The premise of the group was that the world is as we know it, except there is a secret war taking place right under our noses between intelligent killer rabbits and the few humans (the Army of Fudd) who know about them and are trying their best to prevent planetary takeover by the “Fluffy Menance” (tm), saving the clueless public from becoming bunny dinner entrees. It had transformation, gore, vore and a PG-13 (“[PiG-13]”) rating. Of course it was furry in its own way. And it had a huge following for the time period, upwards to 100,000 subscribers/daily viewers according to Usenet statistics. And it was a stepping stone for many budding young writers. As I post this, I know of one former alt.devilbunnies author who is holding a book signing in Australia today (well, maybe it was earlier as it’s now tomorrow there or close to it). One other has had some games published. Another is a successful web comic author, and that web comic author and at least one other author I know of are shopping novels among the various publishers.

Anyway, I spent 15 years writing for the group. Along the way, various members would send links to various bunny/squirrel-related news/pictures out to the author’s discussion email list (posts to alt.devilbunnies were to be in-character as much as possible to provide a suspension of disbelief, thus an email list for discussion/collaboration behind the scenes). It is through the author’s list that I found driprat’s Jack comic strip (Warning: Mature content there if you’re not familiar with it.) And even the whimsical, like a drawing of a squirrel inside an empty peanut butter jar licking the inside of the jar. This would lead me over to the very sought after up-and-coming northwestern artist, Julie Thompson (aka Feather Lady). I’m proud to call her a net friend and I have one of her paintings on my wall (a squirrel, of course!). She used to post some of her artwork on Artspots, so I lurked there until it imploded. Her most recent stuff is now on Facebook.

A lot of those emailed links, including Jar Licker were thanks to Nefaria (johnjfriedrich). I also followed his devilbunny character account (and many other alt.devilbunnis authors) on Livejournal. It was through his interaction with Buzzy “notasquirrel” (another alt.devilbunnies author) that I first came across Babsiwuff (as babsbunny), though I never had bothered to “friend” her there. But there were interactions through Nefaria’s account. Eventually, both Buzzy and Feloni (Nefaria’s female devilbunny character) would come visit me here in Maine in plushie form around 2007 for a gathering of alt.devilbunnies authors. (It would be Buzzy’s third plushie visit.) I felt inspired and created a squirrel fursuit to torment Feloni with. Apparently, it wasn’t appreciated as the fursuit would eventually get returned to me. Sorry, Nefaria.

Somewhere in there, I came across the alt.furry.binaries groups and like many others before and since wish there was mental bleach available the first time I saw a Doug Winger sketch. WTF? Definitely, not what I’m looking for in furry art. Of course, there’s one I remember and still can’t believe is credited to DW. It’s too clean for him as in the female isn’t a herm nor extremely endowed (to put it politely). I believe it dates back to about 1997 or so. It shows two naked anthro squirrels, male and female. Male is covering his privates and shows signs of extreme pain on his muzzle with his eyes closed. Across the top is a title along the lines of: “Problem with being furry #10: natural reflexive actions…” or something along those lines. There is a cartoon bubble above the female with something along the lines of: “You said they were your nuts and you put them in my face, what did you expect me to do.” ‘Nuf said there.

I also lurked on FA starting sometime in late 2006 or early 2007. I made an attempt in late 2007 to set-up an account (aldin), but my system crashed. I assumed it failed to set-up, especially, when I tried to log in after reboot but couldn’t. I didn’t bother to try again because I found I didn’t really need an account to look at the artwork. Early on, I could even send comments to some folks (or notes or whatever). Over time, that changed. And then over time, people started setting their accounts to only be viewable by those who were logged in. So, in late 2012, I, finally got around to trying again and got a “real” account. It’s also when I learned that FA had reserved my earlier attempt, but no luck in getting it to reset the password. My email addy probably got cut off in the original set-up process when my system crashed. Oh well.

At that same time, I started to lurk on Weasyl, as this was about the time they stopped requiring an invite code to join. I didn’t see anything there at that time that I wasn’t already seeing on FA, so FA won that round.

One of the reasons I took so long to try again was hesitation. Unfortunately, there’s still a lot of baggage around the word “furry” and working through a government contractor makes one extra cautious about what one posts and where that can be traced back to one’s real name. So, I remain a “semi-closeted” furry. As I don’t like crowds, you probably won’t see me at any furry-theme conventions.

Oh, I, eventually, got one on Weasyl early this year simply because some of the artists I watched on FA fled over to Weasyl. I remain active on both if watching/commenting counts enough to be called “active”.

I’m also been active in scouting for 35 years and am an avid scout badge/patch/crest collector. I have over 2,000 badges/patches/crests on seven camp blankets representing scouting on 5 continents. Probably three-quarters of them are furry-related either with cartoon characters, anthros or feral animals on them. Don’t ask me how many squirrels there are. I’ve never counted. In 2009, I wrote to the Maine Dept. of Conservation and received permission to bring their anti-litter raccoon, TidyCoon, out of retirement, alter and rename him to become the local scout district’s mascot. KeVy (district’s initial’s KV and pronounced kev-e or kev-vee) was introduced to district volunteers at the annual volunteer recognition banquet in early 2010 and became an instant success.

So quick summary:
Found fandom around 1989 through alt.fan.furry, so qualify as a “gray muzzle” depending on your definition of such. Not very active in main stream furry fandom.
Wandered away for a while participating on the edges of the fandom through alt.devilbunnies
Wandered back and lurk/watched since 2006 or so.
Got around to making my presence known with a real account on FA in 2012 and Weasyl in 2014.
Have made one “fur suit”, provided it was for a plushie and not a human.
Created (modified an existing mascot) the current raccoon mascot for my local scout district.

One more part to go: Evolution of Aldin