%% title = "furry! —w—"

- I like fur!
it's really pleasant to the touch.

    + if I could, I would hug out all the cats in the world.
    unfortunately I'm allergic to cats, but at least I can imagine the enjoyment.

        - actually, I _do_ hug my parents' cats somewhat regularly when I visit them.
        it's just that I get a rash 5 minutes after hugging them to my face :oh:

    - honestly, it makes me think life would be a lot more pleasant if at least some of us had fur irl.
    so why don't we?

        - biology, evolution, and all that boring stuff of course...

        - thankfully on the Internet, anything goes.
        I can imagine.
        I can create.
        I can be whatever I want to be.

- [_this dance is like a weapon of self-defense against the present tense_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPAZV8y4B44){.secret}

    + realising my love of fur has been a huge source of internal conflicts for some time.

        - overcoming [fear of the unknown][page:philosophy/fear-of-the-unknown] isn't exactly the most easy or pleasant mental exercise.

    - but being able to imagine I'm a humanoid cat lets me not worry about actual deficiencies of my body.

        - I was born with atopic dermatitis, and my skin has always been a source of problems.

            + in early childhood I'd get horrible rashes, sometimes so painful and graphic I do not want to describe them here.

                - especially before doctors recommended me good emollients to moisturise my skin with.
                my atopic dermatitis manifests itself as intense itching and skin dryness; moisturising is important in making it bearable

                - some kids would ask me "what happened to you?" out of curiosity.
                I'd respond "nothing, it's just my illness."

            - nowadays I take experimental meds which lower the symptoms to a manageable level.
            I actually started liking how I look after I started undergoing treatment.
            probably because my skin isn't inflamed all the damn time, so I can shift my focus from my face feeling red hot to actually appreciating how it looks.

- I view being a furry not as a rejection of my body, but rather as an augmentation of it.

    - this is more or less why my fursona is so mundane.
    it's just me with cat features ---w---

        + I have an anime human-looking face rather than a snout.
        I think it's cuter that way :3

            - technically anime-style faces _do_ resemble snouts slightly; they're just very short.
            (how fitting for a cat.)

    - there are lots of cool things about the human body.
    the motor skill of your hands is kind of insane.
    unless you have some disability of course.

        - but the customisation options are just so boooring! everybody looks pretty much the same.
        
            + you get to customise your shape and color of your hair, but not the size and placement of your ears, or the level and color of your floof?

                - human floof so ugly and coarse ---w---

            - and you don't even get a cute tail {-that constantly gets caught on closing doors _OW FUCK_-}

            - all the other animals have those, so why not us?

                - like I know they're not practical from a hunter-gatherer sort of standpoint, but we live in a society.

- I'll admit my first conscious exposure to furries was not _the most normal_ thing in the world.

    - we were playing Geometry Dash with a friend at school, and we encountered a level that had some furry porn in it :oh:

        - I was a pretty non-assertive kid at the time, so I conformed to his reactions (basically disgust.)

            - except... later I thought about it, and the more I let the idea of a furry sink in, the more I liked it.
            yet the more I thought about that _thing_ (ugh) we encountered, the more I hated myself for thinking furries were cool.

            - that's probably what led to me being anti-furry for a good while.

- so wanting to be a furry built up in me for 5--6 years. (it started around 2017--2018)

    - the tipping point was after I played Deltarune and really liked Ralsei.
    "is it wrong to like a furry character from a game?"

        - still my favourite fluffy kindboy ---w---

    - a few months later...
    I stumbled upon [this blog post from soatok](https://soatok.blog/2020/04/23/never-underestimate-the-furry-fandom/) and it made me realise just how fucking deep I was in my anti-furry Mariana trench.

        - why _of course_ furries are not harmful you dumbass!
        what even made you think that?
        
        - maybe it's time to swim out of there before the pressure crushes you?

- soon enough I thought, "[_hehehehe \*mydli\* \*mydli\*_][pic:01JCE80BJC51R6706Z1GD7VNA2] let's have some fun with my online identity!"

I started this website.

    - at first I didn't mention anything about being a furry.
    I started using Ralsei as my online avatar and persona, because he's a pretty aesthetically pleasing character.
    not wanting to steal other people's art, I also started drawing around that time.

    - a few months later, I slowly started [crawling out of my shell and hittin' truth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxfN-dFyzEQ){.secret}.
    I added a little branch to the treehouse _mildly suggesting_ I was a furry to people who were curious enough to click around, and finally, over a year later, in September this year [I came out with a fursona][branch:01JCE80BJC51R6706Z1GD7VNA2].

        - as of writing this I'm still not displaying it very proudly on my website (my drawing skills are a constant work in progress!) but having it as my profile pic everywhere puts me at ease. ---w---

- I feel a lot more comfortable saying this now:

    + ## I am a furry, and I'm proud of it!

        - [_I am doing_][r]{.secret}\
        [_no harm_][r]{.secret}

        [r]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPAZV8y4B44