how did you join and or find out about or find the furry fandom?

[Rake racoon]

what is your story of finding the furry fandom

this is mine

it all started about two of three years ago when I was fundraising for the Rotary by selling tickets for the  duck race(1) during some festival or something i cant remember right now in Memorial peace park in Maple ridge while i was following our mascot somebody came up and asked for a picture of the mascot and I said of course But I was curious why because it was just an ordinary mascot but she called it a furry which I didn't know what that was at the time and so i thought nothing of it so we went to the outer area of of the festival and she started talking to the person in the costume and i told the person that the mascot doesn't talk back and the person told me that quote "I know they don't talk" so she got her picture me and my friend who was in the costume was in the costume at the time talked about it for a few minutes and we could make any sense of it and so carried on until after my shift was done then me and my dad who came to pick me up  where going round the park looking at things and so while we where doing this i asked him what furry was and he said he didn't know which now looking back isn't surprising well this furry thing was bouncing around my head for the rest of the day so i went and looked it up on the vast and glorious internet in three places  YouTube  and Google and after going through all the things that said horrible things on Google went on YouTube an looked up furry documentary to find a back round or if this person was just crazy and found a video (2) and then went on to look further on YouTube on more videos which by then peaked my interest then I eventually  found out there where conventions via (3) then I found Furaffinity at some point then listened to Furcast and started to look for places where there are furries in BC so i found out about Vancoufur (4) then eventually found my way here

1. a charity event where we race rubber ducks down a river in Maple ridge park and other areas for prizes which raises money for youth groups in the area http://www.rotaryduckrace.ca/             
2. http://youtu.be/cNt32exROCg
3. http://youtu.be/SG-6bYdCpzc and http://youtu.be/Z-4Xo753xf8
4.http://youtu.be/CmMxvZH-SiA and http://youtu.be/TIBm7YBshgs

[Owl]

I'm most likely one of the newer people to the whole community. I only started to mostly socialize with other furries over the past month and a bit. Before that I didn't really associate with them.

Why I got into it I suppose is because all of the furries I've met are really friendly and I like to converse with mostly like minded people who like the arts. So the two more or less go hand in hand.

[weremagnus]

Finding the VCL and Yerf galleries way back when I was in middle school was my introduction to the word furry and the concept of the fandom I guess. My interest in cartoon creatures + monsters that walk'n'talk was always long-standing since childhood because thanks Disney Afternoon.

[lindel]

I've also liked the furry art style and ever since I was a kid I've always held a fascination for dragons, so it makes sense that one would become my sona. However it wasn't until about 2 years ago that I actually started calling myself a furry due to my friend calling me out on it.I suppose I also have AR 2013 to 'blame' as well.I dressed up in a red 13 fullsuit(at this time I called it cosplay and ignored the furry fandom part) .After finding I enjoyed the fun I had suiting everything just fell into place

[Drake Wingfire]

I started off far from the general furry community myself. nearly 14 years ago I actually found my way into the otherkin community as the result of (simply put) a few strange feelings and thoughts that lead me to identifying completely as a dragon. One of those being my younger selfs thing for always drawing a particular red dragon who had a lot of similar personality traits, but was just much more complete so to speak. Eventually something just clicked in my head where it was a "oooh...im just drawing me and what I want to be, but as a dragon" and thus Drake Wingfire was born...err... hatched!

This lead to me joining on a random dragonkin board where I actually heard of furries for the first time ever. With how it sounded coming from only a couple of guys I actually thought furries were a little odd, a total pot calling the kettle black scenario as here I am standing from a point saying I am dragon in spirit and then thinking furries are the ones who are odd lol. Not to say my opinion on them was totally tainted, I was at least a little aware that I wasn't really "normal" by any means myself, which is probably why I am sitting here and posting this today.

Well I didn't stay on that forum for more than just a couple years, so I actually kinda just floated around as a loner on the net till 2004 not really poking my muzzle into any other groups cause I didn't know what I really wanted socially, till I discovered Furry.ca (which is now sadly dead as many old forums I knew are) Thats where I got my first real taste of the furry side of things and it really did blow my expectations cause the people I met were a pretty chill group. So much through my later highschool years I got to know and meet a few local furs, even started calling myself one but sadly keeping the spiritual dragon parts of me rather deeply hidden out of fear people just would not understand it and potentially ostracize me. That however has vastly changed in the last 6 years though after getting back to my roots as it were, these days I feel a strong connection to both those communities and I try not to hide who I actually am.

Once ya go furry, you aint leaving in a hurry XD

[Wereman]

Interesting accounts, thank you all for sharing.

Sometimes one thing leads into the other and you find the community interesting and pleasant to be in. It was a friend way back who introduced to the concept of furry and the respective artwork. Very interesting subject.

The more interesting concept over the last couple of years is describing furry and the respective fathom/community to the general public. Whether it is family, friends, people at work... The response is interesting yet every once in a while you get the unfortunate response from your audience giving furries a less than good reputation.

[Neox]

Drew lots of dragons in middle school. Looked for more dragon art online and found this thing called VCL 12 years ago (can't believe it's still a site, lol).

That slope was coated in something so slippery I swear Bad Dragon now uses it for their cum-lube.

3 or 4 years ago I started hanging out with the local furries and it's been great.

Never looked back. I regret nothing.

[kohl]

Was searching werewolf pictures on DA. In one of the descriptions the artist wanted to point out that it wasn't a furry, it was a werewolf. Then I searched it on the internet.

[JaiJackal]

Glad you started this post, I'm always super interested in how people found the fandom.

I found it when I was 12/13. My cousin introduced me to roleplaying on ezboards and I got super hooked. I originally roleplayed as a wolf character on several forums where you interacted as a wolf pack. I started my own forums (lol even started a forum for roleplaying as Zoid characters)... I was pretty addicted and eventually met one of my first boyfriends from the forum. He was the one that explained furries to me and I immediately got interested. I joined the Texas furry forums and started getting involved with the community online.

As a kid I was also pretty obsessed with Egyptian mythology and eventually settled on a jackal sona. Though she's changed over the years, no longer Anubian-looking. I used to wear a fox tail 24/7 at school and would write furry pride and draw Jai all over my chucks. lol obviously chilled out as I got older. It wasn't really until I moved to San Francisco that I got more involved with actually meeting other furs. When I was a kid it was mostly an online thing for me.

Anyways, yeah.. kinda sad I don't roleplay as much anymore. It'd be fun to get back into it again. I'm really happy I started branching out and meeting furs in person. There just weren't as many furs living around me as a kid.

[TimePages]

Started in grade 2 when I was obsessed with the book series Warrior Cats and when I began to look up vids about them. Animations of the cats eventually lead to furry animations in general, and now here I am lol. Was in the closet about it for like.... 7 years though. That stopped when some friends found a folder full of art I made >.< They were totally cool with it though.

[carvore]

Hilariously enough, my Dad is a furry (and my Mom recently became one too). I've grown up around the fandom and junk, and when I was like 10 I found out other people online also did the whole dressing up like animals and drawing anthro animals thing. I thought it was a family thing lmao. i've been a proud furry ever since!

[Sasha]

Don't think I've ever written mine before.

In a dark time of my life, one day while walking somewhere naturey in a certain spot I felt an energy or memory, or as if in a past life as some form of feline I had visited there before.

Every time I'd go past this spot it'd get slightly more intense and I'd learned some feral emotions from it (becoming thoughtless and instinctual/honing adrenaline at will, useful walking alone at night.)

He taught me not to be afraid of dark foresty areas when before I was very paranoid, a lot about connecting to my inner self, and worked as a sort of vessel psychologically to work out a lot of issues I had with my own self (I don't see it as integral to the above experience, but a wonderful aside.)

One day everything aligned in to "tiger" - because this presence felt large, and solitary but social, and everything fell in to its right place. Before that point I'd never really thought too much about tigers, or had any level of obsession towards them - in fact I'd toyed with having a panther avatar years before cause it felt different having an animal as a picture.

I tried joining the forums here Dec. 2011 (Wow, before Void joined) under the name "WildEye" knowing briefly of furries but not knowing how to integrate "tiger" in to it, and left feeling as if I had no fursona or nickname to go along with it, and it didn't feel like I was really a furry.

After half a year of understanding I found out what I was called - otherkin, and it fit very well in to how I saw him at that point and when I reintroduced myself on here (as TigerKindred - Kindred with tigers, bland, but I still didn't want a name or fursona - just "me") MaoiNeko said otherkin was just a huge part of the furry soup and I actually felt at home here.

First fur I met (Kippy, a green tiger) just called me "tiger" for short and I kept it as it sounded like a name somehow and also stuck to the fact that it sounded as if I was just being called by my animal as I did not know of a name, and that name stuck for yeeeaars.

Changed my name to Sasha after writing a furry story about a tiger kinda paralleling my life and continuing past it, and it fit well - the Amur tiger being Russian, and a Russian name to go, and it is in fact another name for Alex (my own name) so it fit and it actually feels right. Poorly cropped avatar on here is part of his badge (which I guess is my own badge/fursona) which I should post here soon.

Sasha~

[RangerRivet]

Mine is about as uninteresting as it gets. As a teenager, I was looking through porn on my phone. Saw some furry porn, and thought "hey... this is actually pretty sexy..."

Then after looking at furry porn for a while and exploring the more erotic side of things I came across second life, which is where I found out how big and diverse the fandom was.

[8bitDRGN]

One summer (about 15 years ago) when visiting relatives in Boston, I started having strange dreams about dragons and being a dragon. I play a lot of games so that wasn't all that surprising, but then I started developing a weird infatuation with them, which quickly developed into a full-blown obsession. I was starting to get a little worried at this point. Finally I met another dragon online early into the autumn season and after a long serious chat with them, I had another dream with a blue dragon. It turned out that blue dragon was me! }=:[D

And I have been one ever since. I found furry shortly after that and I've been at home ever since. Many things have changed in my life but this is one thing that shall remain the same forever.

~K

[Shiro]

Way back in middle school ( close to 10 years now ) I was labeled as the weird kid. The ugly duck. The fuckhead. Everyone picked on me, and it wasn't very fun.

Daily I asked myself if it was worth it to go back to school, and I tried numerous times to kill myself. Needless to say holding your breath underwater was only a fools dream, but I was a kid. I prayed for something to change and for something to make things better.

Without really knowing or understanding what happened,  I felt as if I had manifested some force of will that didn't truly belong to me. I didn't quite get what had happened, but the easiest way to kind of describe what happened was " I wasn't gonna take no shit anymore ". I felt like a wolf in exile and I wanted some form of beastly revenge

A year later, after living my life of wolf passion, I managed to make a few friends who showed me what fur affinitt was. It wasn't really until highschool that they allowed people to make accounts again, but I clicked hardcore with the art and storis of other furries.

Check back again about 6 years later, and I honestly don't know how I met him, but I bumped into cyndercide I think, and he told me about the forums. I went to a party at milos house and that was it. I was a full fledged furry.