Okay, this is going to be the weirdest letter to the editor you’ll ever get, I guarantee it.
The article ‘Furries, people who dress up as animals, wish to garner smiles, raise money’ was a well-written article, but it has one glaring error.
Right in the headline, in fact. The whole “people who dress up as animals” thing.
I’m a furry, and I stumbled upon this article. You guys just ended up being the ones who get the letter because this is a common fallacy. I just feel the need to straighten this up.
The whole “fursuiting” thing is a subset of furry fandom.
See, we’re fans of anthropomorphic animals, which can probably be just as easily described as cartoon animals except we really like Richard Adams’ book “Watership Down” too; and you lose the nice assonance. So, we go with the $10 word.
The whole fursuiting thing can best be described as the furry fandom’s equivalent of an anime fan cosplaying (costume playing) or a Trekkie dressing up in a Starfleet uniform.
Those guys are living out their fantasies by dressing up and pretending to be the characters they want to be.
However, though the costumers stand out like a sore thumb, the average furry would rather just watch “Rango” or “Kung Fu Panda 2” than actually put forth the effort to wear a costume, this average furry included.
So, anyway, thanks for letting me straighten that up!
P.S. It really was otherwise a nice article.
— Brendan Kachel
