Unobtainium is an insider joke. Originally it came from aeronautics engineering and referred to currently not existing materials or components with fantastic properties that would be very useful to solve tricky problems. Later it got adopted by the SF fandom to refer to likewise fantastic substances/tech. Considering this stuff can only be found on a moon 4 lightyears away it's not too farfetched to think some savvy scientists in the fictional future would give it this name, though.

As for heroic wolf movies, there's an OVA of Wolf's Rain.

If the anthropomorphic childhood movies topic is still going:
Robin Hood and The Fox and the Hound were my two favorite child hood movies and I don't doubt they contributed to my furriness nowadays. Especially Robin Hood.
The animation and the character archetypes were the only things I liked about The Fantastic Mr Fox. Everything else did indeed suck.

Also.. I told my friend About my furriness and the furry fandom
I now have a Panda friend whose going with me to anthrocon next year...

I didn't actually see Robin Hood until a few months ago.

That's awesome! Please tell me how it all went down!

Pretty cool you found a friend with similar interest.

I've had a couple of friends that were into it before i was so there was never any real kind of coming out on my part, it just sort of grew on me.

Unfortunately none of my friends were that cool. The ones who know vary from supportive but uninterested to weirded out but not hateful.

Once, one of my friends was copying down my government notes, and he spent a little while looking at the (rather furry) doodles in the margins. He pointed at one and asked "Hey, [Ruu's real name], since when are you a furry?" I shrugged, he laughed, and then we talked about something else. =P

Last night a relative and my brother were cracking jokes about me talking to furries online. Its might become their new running joke about me. Oh course true to my brother's style that comes from BOTH sides of the extended family, it was all very dirty and crude. Its a big standout thing in my family that when it comes to joking around or conversion, the dirty and crude can just slip in easily and the vast majority ends up being funny to most in the family.

I used my old avatar (Was of Fox) on pretty much every website I've been a part of for the past...almost year. The most response I got was something about a cartoon dog. Just switched pretty much every avatar to my current one, including Facebook (WHY NOT LOL). Gonna see if anyone cares.

Helps that pretty much everyone calls me a furry while I deny it because they only think of it negatively...xP

This week should entertain me.

I've always considered my furry activities completely sepperate from my reall life. I'm glad you guys are a little more comfortable with it.

Eh, nothing to really be comfortable about unless you just kind of yell about it at everyone. For me, it's there, it's a part of my life that I enjoy, not something I should really HIDE.

I just keep it one the down-low
if anyone ever finds out its not the end of the world, I'd just rather avoid the potential awkwardness

Awkwardness is my specialty. :3

I think of it as just a thing, some people are into it, some people aren't, and as long as you aren't shouting from the rooftops "I AM A FURRIE!" Than its all cool, and if you are, get the heck off the roofs ya twit.

I really just find it interesting. Not something i find i need to tell people about though.

Met some very interesting and some very cool people since trying to be a bit more activr within the fandom however.

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This.

My forum account is registered to an email that nobody I know in "meatspace" is aware of. All of my fanfic is buried down in some file directories on my not-so-smart-phone. Drawings I've made are inconspicuously tucked in the back of a folder, which is stuck in a seldom-used corner of my bookshelf-- well-disguised enough to escape notice, but not obviously concealed in a way that invites curiousity. Any scans of comics (or just any digital drawings I've made) reside on an SD card that stays in my wallet.

Not that I really care whether people know or not... it's just a fun exercise to try and be as discreet as possible.

I'm not afraid to act furry or whatnot. But I know how much is the border between "oh (s)he's just being quirky" and "what a weirdo!"

I agree with Seth and GunRacer, even though my interest doesn't extend to full furry fandom, I usually stop myself when I wanna tell my friends about a furry comic unless it's really good, mostly because they could misconstrue it to be actual furriness and take it completely out of proportion. Nearly happened once too, so I'm not just paranoid...what I'm not...

They probably wouldn't care all that much and I wouldn't care after they found out but my friends are odd enough when it comes to music interests, I wouldn't know what to expect, nor want to until it was necessary.

I'm the kind of furry that hides it pretty well in real life. You would never think I was unless you asked about it! It's not that I'm ashamed of it, it's just if someone found out besides someone in my family or a close friend, I'm worried that they would perhaps associate me with all the bad stuff that goes on in the fandom, which I'm no part of.

Meh. I was pretty much that way then like, half of my guild randomly started making claims of me being a furry (accurate claims, but still) so I was just like "YEAH WHATEVER, I'M BORED LET'S HAVE SOME FUN."

Hasn't turned out bad as of yet, other than people being all :O. If they ask specifically, I'll tell them, but no one has seemed to think much of it. Just part of who I am~ Also helps that I only have a small circle of friends I truly care about x3

I don't really talk about being a furry, but neither do I view it as something I need to hide. When you get right down to it, it's just another hobby. Most of my friends know that I draw 'animal-people', occasionally wear a fox hat, and have a bit of a marsupial fixation, but beyond that I don't really bother discussing it.

This is about how I am about being a furry. I only told my friend because watching cartoons and reading comic books are some of his hobbies. He also lives with me and I want to go to conventions and I need someone to go with. x3

I'm actually quite discreet about my furriness but I'm not at all ashamed of it.

I've always been embarassed to be a furry, even if people didnt have preconcived notions about the fandom the whole thing seems rather silly to me to the point where it'd still be kind of embarassing to me. Which doesn't mean I dont enjoy being part of the fandom, I just think we're all a bit touched in the head.

Funny but not true. No one in this world is truly "Normal", and everyone's slightly quirky in their own special way. I have not ever seen anything that shows that anyone here is truly insane. Quirky or muddled, perhaps, but not insane. In other words, you (and everyone here) are as normal as normal gets.

You couldn't be more right. Some goes with the furry fandom itself and how diverse it is.

We're all a little funny i suppose, bit that is what makes it interesting.

Well I'm a little funny anyways...

People say I'm a bit touched in the head...

On an unrelated note thought, why have I met so many other gay/bi/not strait people in the fandom? I honestly an slightly baffled by it. Is it because generally furries are sort of the oddballs or what?

If I had to guess I'd say you're right. Like I said the whole furry thing tends to attract the various weird kids of society.


That may be true, but alot of the quirkier ones find their way to the fandom. I'm just sayin........

I think it's simply because the fandom is more accepting.

And also, great news! I'm finally on FA! Woo!

And on FA you now have my support.

Also, in a stream I was in once I ran into my friend Jason't friend Mr. Chris Mad, turns out he's a furrie. Small fuzzie world people.

Since the fandom in itself constitutes a deviance of the social norm members might be more accepting towards other perceived deviances (such as pertaining to the heteronormative norm). Plus there's the anonymity online activity grants, so it might just appear there's a higher proportion of LGBT people among the fandom even if it's the same as in the society at large.

Not sure how something that's around for 4 million years in the human species or even other mammals is "weird," though...

There's almost no girls in the fandom. Many furries aren't social enough to interact outside the fandom.

While I don't think I'm a furry, I'm just wondering.

What defines a "furry" in this forum? I'm not really sure.

Is is me, or should there just be an FAQ here with the question "What defines a furrie" on it. I'm not trying to be rude, but I really see this as a frequently asked question in this thread.

There probably should be.
It would make things a lot easier for the people asking and the people answering.

the best we could hope for is to add it to the first post, but editing the first post resets the poll

Well, I'm not a furry by that definition.

I enjoy works of art or liturature because they are good, not because they have animals with anthropomorphic traits.

Well I think furries are like that too. Just for furries, the anthropomorphs work in its favor.