Felines and Vulpines

[Renwaldo]

Apparently back in the fandom's starting years felines were the most prominent species of fursonas. I was wondering if this is still true given how much we've evolved and how many more of us there are now. When I look around now, I see a great deal of foxes.

Your thoughts?

[Rhari]

Foxes are everywhere. You can't throw a plushie at a furcon without hitting at least one of us!

[Kell]

And that is after you dig the plushy out from under the foxes piled atop it, and manage to get clear of the wolves to throw the plushie...

Far as I have seen, canines are ruling the fandom these days as far as males go (I have noticed a STRONG leading toward straight and dom males being wolves... and foxes being subs... who could have guessed that? :P Stereotypes reinforce themselves round here... :P), with felines perhaps ontop for females. That has held true for my time on SL and Furcadia, as well as many chatrooms.

I have also noticed a growing number of what I wouldn't have considered furry characters a few years ago, around lately. I have noticed a LOT more human characters, a lot more neko and monster characters, just new and interesting things. All cool by my book, but it seems the line between a furry character and an anime based RP shrinks every day.

[z00p]

non-dragon scalies ROOL! *runs away*





Yeah.. I actually thought felines were dominant.  But that was when i was remembering how frequent they are when I was a kid.  Now there's too many canines.  *throws a bone*

[Van_Fox]

To be honest, Ive seen more wolves. But thats understandable

[Silvermink]

I think there are more wolves than anything nowadays. Lots of huskies, too.

I'm not sure about felines having been most prominent. There were a lot of foxes, too.

[Van_Fox]

We can be sure of one thing. Theres only one Snail furry in existance.

[Maoi Neko]

I have noticed a LOT more human characters, a lot more neko and monster characters, just new and interesting things.

Sorry to do this, but it is a pet peeve of mine. Neko just means cat and its pronounced neh-koh, not nee-koh. The american anime fandom has taken that and warped it to mean people with animal ears and tails, even going so far as to say something ridiculous as nekoized wolf. In japan the often refer to the catpeople as nekomimi (meaning catears) or nekojin (meaning catpeople).

Once again sorry everyone. With Neko in my name it ticks me off to see this misinterpreted and then people assuming I am one of those misinterpretations.

Back to the subject though. I've been in the fandom for about 8 years now and the number one species has been wolf for the whole time according to all the sources I've seen. Second is fox and third is big cats if you group them all together. I have noticed a large influx of huskeys as well, but i doubt theyd take third unless the big cats were split up into each different kind.

It makes sense for cat to have been first back when the fandom started since it was split from the scifi fandom and their are serveral scifi sources with feline species, but as the fandom quickly became its own entite I'm sure that didn't last long. Though when furry and anime started intermingling I bet the feline populace had a resurgence. heh

mew =^.^=

[Silvermink]

Sorry to do this, but it is a pet peeve of mine. Neko just means cat and its pronounced neh-koh, not nee-koh. The american anime fandom has taken that and warped it to mean people with animal ears and tails, even going so far as to say something ridiculous as nekoized wolf. In japan the often refer to the catpeople as nekomimi (meaning catears) or nekojin (meaning catpeople).

"Kitsune" (kee-tsu-neh, not kit-soo-nay, for the record), isn't any better - it just means "fox" but the anime and furry fandoms have piled the Shinto-folklore kami context on top of it. :)

I guess I can't blame people too much for shortening things, but it feels like the concepts get watered down along the way.

[Cross]

Sorry to do this, but it is a pet peeve of mine. Neko just means cat and its pronounced neh-koh, not nee-koh. The american anime fandom has taken that and warped it to mean people with animal ears and tails, even going so far as to say something ridiculous as nekoized wolf. In japan the often refer to the catpeople as nekomimi (meaning catears) or nekojin (meaning catpeople).

"Kitsune" (kee-tsu-neh, not kit-soo-nay, for the record), isn't any better - it just means "fox" but the anime and furry fandoms have piled the Shinto-folklore kami context on top of it. :)

I guess I can't blame people too much for shortening things, but it feels like the concepts get watered down along the way.

Kitsune is both the word for fox, and the word for a mythical many tailed fox with magic powers. its not anime thats been adding this context, its actually an old Japanese belief. foxes are closely associated with the Shinto(?) deity Inari. its just a culture gap that we don't fully understand. because in japan, even regular animals are considered to be magical. for instance, Foxes, raccoons and certain cats are said to posses the power to transform into almost anything. so in short, even regular foxes are magic.

and believe me or don't, i spent 5 years taking Japanese in high school and collage and spent a month in nihon. i can have a decent conversation in the language.

[Silvermink]

Kitsune is both the word for fox, and the word for a mythical many tailed fox with magic powers. its not anime thats been adding this context, its actually an old Japanese belief. foxes are closely associated with the Shinto(?) deity Inari. its just a culture gap that we don't fully understand. because in japan, even regular animals are considered to be magical. for instance, Foxes, raccoons and certain cats are said to posses the power to transform into almost anything. so in short, even regular foxes are magic.

and believe me or don't, i spent 5 years taking Japanese in high school and collage and spent a month in nihon. i can have a decent conversation in the language.

I know the folklore basis, yes. And fair enough that the two meanings are tangled up in Japanese. But is the unadorned word "kitsune" commonly used in Japanese to signify specifically "fox spirit", or is this just how we use it in English? And if it's used that way in Japanese is this in any way due to the influence of the word having been used that way in English? Or is it just that due to the cultural implications there's no difference between talking about "just a fox" and "a fox spirit" because those concepts aren't readily-separable?

Let me put it this way - if a Japanese person were to refer specifically to a fox spirit, what word would he or she use? Kitsune? Kitsune-kami? I was told by a boyfriend-at-the-time, who was (okay, I presume still is) half Japanese, that "kitsune" by itself doesn't get used that way in Japanese, but he also put a lot of stock in his own opinions so I'm willing to entertain the possibility that he was wrong.

Anyway, I still think the concept's been pretty thoroughly bastardized in the anime and furry fandoms.

[Renwaldo]

We can be sure of one thing. Theres only one Snail furry in existance.

I must know who this furson is.

[Cross]

Kitsune is both the word for fox, and the word for a mythical many tailed fox with magic powers. its not anime thats been adding this context, its actually an old Japanese belief. foxes are closely associated with the Shinto(?) deity Inari. its just a culture gap that we don't fully understand. because in japan, even regular animals are considered to be magical. for instance, Foxes, raccoons and certain cats are said to posses the power to transform into almost anything. so in short, even regular foxes are magic.

and believe me or don't, i spent 5 years taking Japanese in high school and collage and spent a month in nihon. i can have a decent conversation in the language.

I know the folklore basis, yes. And fair enough that the two meanings are tangled up in Japanese. But is the unadorned word "kitsune" commonly used in Japanese to signify specifically "fox spirit", or is this just how we use it in English? And if it's used that way in Japanese is this in any way due to the influence of the word having been used that way in English? Or is it just that due to the cultural implications there's no difference between talking about "just a fox" and "a fox spirit" because those concepts aren't readily-separable?

Let me put it this way - if a Japanese person were to refer specifically to a fox spirit, what word would he or she use? Kitsune? Kitsune-kami? I was told by a boyfriend-at-the-time, who was (okay, I presume still is) half Japanese, that "kitsune" by itself doesn't get used that way in Japanese, but he also put a lot of stock in his own opinions so I'm willing to entertain the possibility that he was wrong.

Anyway, I still think the concept's been pretty thoroughly bastardized in the anime and furry fandoms.

i agree with the bastardization. lol. but as i understood it from reading about the folklore, was that there was really no separation between 'just a fox' and a 'fox spirit' as you put it. i think its one of those words you have to read out of context, there are a lot of them in japanese. for instance, you probably know, 'hana' means both 'flower' and 'nose.' but they are pronounced identically, so you have to read into the rest of whats being said to understand the meaning.
i remember when i was in japan, my host brother told me about a time he saw a 'akai-kitsune' or 'red-fox' at the temple we visited. i don't know if they usually do, or usually don't use the prefix to describe the regular animal. i'm not sure if someone might say something different if they thought it was a fox-spirt they saw. but im not japanese, i really don't know as much as a japanese person would! :3

[Silvermink]

i agree with the bastardization. lol. but as i understood it from reading about the folklore, was that there was really no separation between 'just a fox' and a 'fox spirit' as you put it. i think its one of those words you have to read out of context, there are a lot of them in japanese. for instance, you probably know, 'hana' means both 'flower' and 'nose.' but they are pronounced identically, so you have to read into the rest of whats being said to understand the meaning.
i remember when i was in japan, my host brother told me about a time he saw a 'akai-kitsune' or 'red-fox' at the temple we visited. i don't know if they usually do, or usually don't use the prefix to describe the regular animal. i'm not sure if someone might say something different if they thought it was a fox-spirt they saw. but im not japanese, i really don't know as much as a japanese person would! :3

I guess it's one of those things that happens when we think of other languages as having one-to-one mappings onto English, when the truth is that there's overlap and intertwinings and words in other languages that describe concepts that aren't so simple to describe in English (German seems to have a lot of those).

Interesting that he added "akai-" (I wonder, as you do, if that's common or if "kitsune" generally implies "akai-kitsune"), though equally I suppose we do much the same thing when we refer to "a fox" vs. "a red fox" - both of those expressions could have the same referent, we're just being more or less specific.

[Renwaldo]

. . .

So anyways, I'm wondering how many felines and vulpines there are on this forum. I'm going to look at the member list and do a rough count.