Lately, when it comes to things labeled "furry", my artistic output and attempts at reaching out have been pretty bone dry. Yet, i thoroughly enjoy reading other people's candid analyses of their own selves and the world around them, and i reckon it is a good time to write my own experiences down before they are all but consumed by the relentless march of time.

But let me start from the beginning, or perhaps slightly earlier…

Back in the day, i was wasting my time away on videogames, "solving" my hardships with escapism. One day, after questioning the meaningless violence, and at times outright sadism, in the ones that my at-the-time boyfriend was playing, he retorted with a question whether i ate meat. For him, it was probably just an attempt at deflection, yet that instant it made me cognization of meat being a product of violence. Vegetarianism was a known "anti-thing" to meat-eating, but "What does that fancy 'veganism' word mean?" i wondered. One Wikipedia article later it became obvious which direction i should take.

The videogaming community we inhabited was teeming with people donning animal-like portraits. Since they had featured animals so prominentaly, parts of self even, surelly there'll be a good few vegans amongst them, right? "Nope, Chuck Testa!" As i learned much later, the proportion of vegans in the wild, and in the "furry" collective were roughly equivalent. All it amounted to was mostly aesthetics. I must've confused them with therians! Silly me! Yet knowing no better place, i stayed.

Enough stumbling in the dark, and one is almost guaranteed to stumble into something, and after a bunch of it—into something really worthwhile. And so did i. Meeting a person with a plethora of uncommon beliefs that you share is exhilirating! Being with the person you care for more than anything in the world every single day i can only describe as… happiness, comfort, peace, belonging… And i can't help it but transport my mind back and feel the happiest i've ever been. Yet, regardless of how much i tried to hold on, if your partner wants to leave you behind, there's nothing you can do about it. A famous proverb by Ἡράκλειτος states that you cannot never step in the same river twice, but it also applies even if you attempt to enter a river and try to remain unchanged for however long you can, as the river will no longer be the same. Only those who hold onto each other and develop together are able to remain a couple in the long run, it seems.

The higher the rise, the more painful the fall. It was agonizing; like losing a huge chunk of yourself, and getting by on hope that it will somehow grow back; eventually… It was amidst this anguish i finally recognized that people will come and go as they please, planets and star systems decay, but the guiding principles of the Universe, or how stoics called it, Λόγος, is timeless. From there many worldview- and consequently life-changing topics arise, but this is not the place to delve into them.

Any significant change takes time, and while i did attempt to patch the hole in myself by remaining in the "furry" collective, it simply reinforced my view with even more examples. For the longest while i'd never been alone for more than a year, and a friend mentioning being single for 6 years baffled me, but now i can perfectly relate. This and few other "furry" labeled websites are, simply put, glorified image galleries, and aren't geared for profound connections, if only by sheer chance. Joining Discord, Twitter, Telegram or any other digital prisons was never an option. Thankfully, we still have tech and places of free of corporate and governmental meddling, and rife with forward-thinking folk. Plus, i have my own projects that might make things even more livable.

But as things were seemingly getting comfortable again, within and without, all hell broke loose, as some people don't pay attention in history class and have let the cult-of-personality scenario play out once again. Shortly after, the person who was closest to me in those trying times, my father, died, with covid finding a separate route to me as well and leaving me worse for wear. But breaking down is never a solution to any problem, and what kind of cosmopolitan would i be if i were to spend most of my time in a single place? Yet "the best laid plans of mice and men"… Our ability to model the world is often greatly overshadowed by our lack of sense of uncertainty. But as long as i stay ahead of the changing world, i should be perfectly fine.

Despite all its flaws, there's no strong reason to quit this website altogether, and, at least personally, drawing has a rather therapeutic, relaxing effect. Having to solve Goolag's CRAPTCHAs, on the other hand, certainly makes visiting it a rather rare event.

🎶 A Great Adventure or Nothing—Sky Atlas 🎶