Interesting Furry question...

Why do people wanna be furries as opposed to, say, flying fish?

Minks are win.

My avatar represents my therian side. Or as some people call them weres. I am deeply in touch with an animal spirit and i choose to take its form as a persona. Most of the time i am out of character while using this apearance but it isnt supposed to be just like me. Im just not a good role player hehe.

Of course i have made alterations to the apearance to my own liking but the avatar still represents the same thing. Just a different fur color and its biped instead of quad.

Vaguely touching on something mentioned up-thread...

Recently, I went looking around for furry avs, searching on "furry avatar" in the Find window (mature search hits allowed). Admittedly I didn't do a thorough search, but I noticed that more than a few of the avs I saw had varying degrees of explicitly sexual traits, like penii, vaginas, and... other. The ones that didn't have explicit body parts tended more towards the cartoonish side, as opposed to the more "realistic" sexually detailed avs.

I know furry isn't just T3H S3XX0R, but it'd be easier to prove that to others, I think, if there was more of an option for realistic furry avs that weren't blatantly sexual.

(Note I said more non-explicit avs, not "fewer explicit avs". I'm not trying to repress, supress, belittle, or otherwise dump on those who do explicit avatars, furry or otherwise. )

I would go along the lines of people pick what they would want to be, and go with that. I am a 15ft tall black wolf before Second Life and now I am a black wolf inside SL, still working on the 15ft tall part

Well.. I'm just your average cybernetic velociraptor. ^_^

The furries that I know are, in general, much less into body modesty and much more into 'free love', like the flower children of the 60's. Many of them don't like to wear clothes, or prefer to wear minimal clothes. We'll wear clothes and hide blatant sexual traits when in sims that insist on more 'proper decorum', but in most furry sims, just being 'in the fur' isn't considered much of an issue, as long as you don't look like you're *ahem* 'overly excited'.

In general, furries tend to be more open to casual/multiple sexual partners. That doesn't mean they will accept anyone who asks. Many are quite selective in who they will choose to get intimate with. But it does mean that there is a much larger market among them for avatars and attachments that aid them in playing out sexual situations in SL. And even if they aren't into sex very much, they still don't mind looking 'anatomically correct'.

As a result, you'll see a lot of furry avatars and attachments for furry avatars that are more 'explicit'. But then again, almost all of the upscale Human skins that you can buy in SL also have detailed sexual traits. It's actually rather hard to find a beautiful Human skin that doesn't.

Personally, my furry avatar doesn't display detailed sexual traits unless the situation warrants it. And for me, that is fairly rare. I'm of the opinion that on a female, the body fur would usually cover such areas fairly well anyway, unless aroused. And since I prefer to have Ceera wear pretty clothes, it's usually a non-issue for me anyway.

Do you mean pigeons, or actual rats with wings.

oh thats mean

Who're you calling a rat with wings?



Oh... nevermind, carry on...

You meen avs people are already wearing? cuz you cant buy a avatar with genetals already on them by default. i never have seen any like that. You have to buy them seprate and attach them.

My avatar (dispite my name) is usually PG. I do have a set of prim breasts and stuff that i attach and can use a HUD to hide them and make them do particle things *cough* but usually im wearing my chest fluff instead. My avatar is always unclothed but being a furry i dont consider that naked. I consider it fur equal clothing. Nobody ever noticed or cared that i was naked cuz my avatar is chibi and cute so i guess they like it hehe.

I agree, and actually when I made my cougar I put a lot of effort into researching their build, attitude, differences in colouration, even mating behavors. Unless it's done for comedic value, I don't really like seeing a stupidly proportioned avatar (like so many wolves with chests thicker than my CRT monitor and arms like tree trunks).



This is mostly true for me too. I mean, it is also about the sex, but the only real defining difference between the default male avatar and default female avatar is the male's chest is always flat. I prefer to make it clear that I'm a guy in more than just mannerism.


It's been my observation though that if your avatar is below waist height (mine at least, my avatar measures 6'3" people have no problems with you being naked even in PG sims. You can wear oversized boobs, dangly bits, a t-shirt that says, "Yiff me!" but no one seems to care because you're too adorable to berate.

The furry avs we make, we don't provide "genitals" or anything sexually specific; however we can't stop someone else from doing that or providing 'aftermarket accessories'.

But this is similarly true for the default human av that you get when you log on to SL. LL didn't provide genitals either, but "entrepreneurs" have.

So I find it interesting that someone is saying that most furry avs come with such details. I know ours don't, I know Whinge's don't, I'm not aware of whose do.

So I'd say the reverse is actually the truth: it's an established fact that the majority of avs do not come with these details pre-applied.

I just did a search for 'furry' in classifieds with mature turned on; 14 results came back, none of them mention genitals.

I'd have to ask, what search did you do that came up differently?

Hmm, I feel like posting something on this.

First off, from a variety standpoint, I think the reason you see so many foxes or cats or whatever is only partially due to overall popularity. In my time in SL, it's come to my attention that there are only a few people that are willing to *BUILD*....not just tinker and slap something together, but make a full-blown avatar or large detailed object, or what have you. So there are a lot of people out there that look at Luskwood or Ninja Weasel Studios and go "Dang, they don't have an anteater, so I guess I'll just get a fox, since I can't make my own."

Squirrels, Chipmunks: Whinge Languish sells awesome squirrels. You can find his shop in Hyades or Taco. (Look for Ninja Weasel Studios.) He also sells mice, bats, otters, raccoons, etc, etc....

Now, in regards to why....man, you'll get some varied answers here. Thing is, this fandom has been around since the early 70s. And since then, almost everyone who comes into it brings their own reasons. This is both the strength and critical weakness of the fandom as a whole. So you'll see a full range of craziness, and more than likely be totally offended by what you'll see sometimes. So asking why people choose to be furry in SL? You'll get a billion different answers.

For me, it's both an aesthetic decision, and a desire to be something different. See, in Real Life, I'm a late-twenties human. That's cool. But I play that role for my entire life. So for me to be able to let my mind wander and be a panda or mouse or what have you is a pleasant release. And in not being human in VR, I don't tend to carry the same societal baggage (expectations and stereotypes) that I would if I played a virtual copy of my RL self.

You'll hear talk of "idealized self" - referred to in The Matrix as "Residual Self Image." This is who you choose to present yourself as. Instead of choosing to be a 5'6" blonde bombshell, I choose to present myself as a 5'4" chubby panda. Why? Who knows, it just pleases me. I enjoy making my own avatars, and I enjoy showing them off to others. I've made a number of them (Rabbit, Panda, Mouse, Android Mouse, Mink, Red Panda, Raccoon, etc..) and every one of them is likely either a facet of myself, or is just a reflection of a particular whim I had at the moment.

The reasons why we present ourselves as you've seen....definitely as varied as the stars.

I have to agree with this. There is only one furry avatar vendor that I know of that sells avatars out of the box who are anatomically correct. (And boy howdy did it surprise me the first time I took off the clothes!)

The rest of them all come sufficiently barbie-fied. All the curves, none of the bits. Even the free ones.

Amusingly, I finally found a free skin for my human avatar that I liked. And I was sufficiently embarassed when I realized that the skin was fully anatomically correct. I think in the furry av world, we just assume it comes barbie-fied, that's why you will see a big aftermarket.

That being said, these were sales displays, some of which made specific mention of 'naughty bits'.

Now, I'm not a prude, and don't mind a nice hoohaw or whatever now and again, but the looking I did suggested that they were a selling point for the avs so equipped, whether or not the naughty bits were on by default.

(And I really wish that a 'serious' humanoid dragon av was available, or somewhere I could find it if they do exist. Right now my av is just a somewhat stylized version of me IRL, because what I've seen wasn't what I wanted, and I'm not sure which of the good av creators [which does not include me at this point] will do commissions.)

Given the quoted bit, above, though, if I get the time this weekend I'll make a more thorough, detailed search to see if the results I got were a quirk of statistics or something else.

Check out Jakkal's Werehouse in Bruin. Jakkal has some pretty awesome Dragon avatars, in my opinion.

The Werehouse AVs are a matter of opinon. I tried one and I really didn't like it. Some find the Werehouse AVs a little creepy (and I have an idea why) so I'd reccomend seeing one in person before buying.

Back OT: I'm sure you've found a reasonable answer for your question already, and I agree with the above responses that the reason for a particular AV is entirely personal. I'm a curious sort when ti comes to philosophies and groups, and I've found it interesting how structures some others are. In some, the type of animal and even fur coloration would be indicitive of something, but in the furry genre/fandom it's really quite chaotic.

But I think that's a good thing. Honestly, if you don't have a Furry AV, I'd reccomend slipping into one that appeals to you and spending a day like that. Check out the furry areas, and even go to your usual haunts. It's fun and even a little liberating to climb out of the human shape (and all of it's accompanying baggage) for a bit. Sometimes it's easier to BE yourself when you're the furthest FROM yourself!

Me? I'm a Hyena. Hyenas have all manner of sterotypes and urban legends and just downright misconceptions about them, which makes them rather fun to play. They're also rare (only 2 or 3 Hyena AVs out there, I have, and love, the Evangeline one.) so I turn a few heads. There are a number of reasons I chose a Hyena, some simple, some not so.

But overall, I think the underlying philosophy/idea/concept/whatever of furries, is to just have fun. Leave your worries and troubles behind and step outside yourself. Like most things, you get out of it what you put into it.

I own quite a few of Jakkal's avs. I like the "creepy" factor of them, lends an air of realism to a non-real situation. I have my totem animals, and I've gotten an av of 2 of them so far. Still waiting on the rest.

That's my reasoning for a "furry" av. Shamanism is something I'm trying to learn more about, and getting into the skin of my totems is helpful.

a long time ago when jakkal first started making avatars i bought a grey wolf. i have a large collection of wolf avatars hehe. I also have a Lost Furest white wolf from back when cheetah first made them. But my most favorit is the Luskwood Grey wolf i bought and re textured it purple and white, then combined it with the NW chibifox. making it into a Chibi Purple Wolf. Its complete with twitching ears, and a wagging tail, wings, halo, and quad animations. Thats mostly always what i wear hehe. But like i mentioned i have a LOT of avatars. people sometimes confuse me for a fox, or a huskey, they even confuse my gender and color. But im actually a Purple Female Spirit Wolf.