Anthro NW! My First Furry Convention

At the start of this month, I attended Anthro NW in Seattle. This was my first ever furry convention and I loved it! I hope to attend many more in the future!

So let’s take a step back so we are all on the same page. A lot of people don’t know what a furry is, and a lot of people have the wrong idea of what a furry is.
Let me first start by saying that I am very new to the furry community and my understanding may be flawed or incomplete as well. 

Simply put, “furry” is a type of cosplay where people dress up as anthropomorphic animal characters. You might get a few existing animal characters such as Sonic the Hedgehog or Nick Wilde from Zootopia, but many furries create their own unique characters and even unique species or mix of species. It is a fandom full of creatives and it isn’t uncommon for people to customize, stitch, sew and build their own masks, gloves and entire costumes -known as fur suits. 

Am I a furry? I don’t know but probably. I have been drawing myself as a dragon for as long as I can remember. Images in my head of my inner self are a dragon or draconic character. And for much of my life I didn’t even know that was weird. I always assumed everyone had some sort of creature they most identified with and “felt like” in some way. So maybe probably, but I also didn’t really know what a furry was until I was an adult and I am still learning the nuances within the fandom. 

Like so many niche fandoms, the furry community has faced a lot of scrutiny from people who don’t understand it and aren’t into it. And, also like so many niche fandoms, almost all of that scrutiny is undeserved and is just boring people being mad about other people enjoying their lives. 

And that is really all it is, people enjoying their lives in the ways they want.

While there are more adult themed fur cons out there, this one was family oriented and there were people of all ages in attendance. Beyond that, there were people from all walks of life in attendance! In fact, the only common factor among many of them was that they all enjoyed the furry fandom- and possibly some level of neurodivergence, but I’ll get to that. 

Overall, it was such a fun experience! The entire event was very welcoming and relaxed. It was amazing to see parents with their kids, especially in the case of parents who weren’t into it and maybe were even confused by the whole thing, but there they were, letting their kids explore their own interests and supporting them all the way. That was really so heart warming to see when so many parents seem to want to shape their kids into whatever ideal version they envision for them, rather than allowing them to become their own selves. There was one young girl I saw who was talking in great detail to a fursuit creator in the vendors area. The mom clearly had no idea what they were talking about but she was trying her best to follow the conversation and ended up helping her daughter pick out some supplies to build her own fur suit. Parents engaging in and supporting their kids’ hobbies and interests is such a wonderful thing to see!! And ya know what? If that girl is any good at making suits and develops a taste for it… she could make a lot of money! Most full fur suits sell for THOUSANDS of dollars! Not that everything has to be monetized of course, she could just enjoy it and do it for fun too! 

There is a joke that all furries are engineers, and there are actually a LOT of engineers who are furries (the people building your planes are probably wearing fursuits on the weekends) but in reality there is a huge variety of people in the furry fandom. One thing that might connect them, beyond the love of the fandom, is neurodivergence. Not to say that everyone who is a furry is neurodivergent but… I haven’t met one yet who isn’t. And honestly it makes perfect sense. Here is a unique environment where the point is to be something that you couldn’t normally be. I recognized about half way through my day there that the reason I felt so comfortable and relaxed was because everyone was unmasking- figuratively speaking. This was basically a bunch of geeks, nerds, weirdos, and freaks who were all just being themselves. Silly and spooky and outrageous and hyperfocused and quiet and everything else under the spectrum. All the things we can never be in proper society because it is inappropriate for some reason or another. All the things that neurodivergent people hide behind the appropriate social mask in order to “fit in” at work or school or even just on the street. 

They are able to get behind their furry mask, and take off their social mask to just be whatever they want to be. And it was fucking beautiful. 

One of the talks I attended was a person literally just nerding out about dinosaurs! They even prefaced their talk with the fact they are NOT a paleontologist, they just really like dinosaurs. They then proceeded to talk to a room full of other not-paleontologists who also really like dinosaurs about how awesome dinosaurs are! 

For me, it was a very similar feeling to when I first moved out here and discovered the deep diversity and overall weirdness of the art community. And it produced very much the same sort of emotional response.

As I watched the fursuit parade towards the end of the night, where all the hundreds of fursuiters walked around the conference area to show off their suits, I was almost overcome with emotion. It is hard to describe the feelings of wonder and awe, acceptance and creativity, but also sorrow and injustice. The feeling of euphoria in being surrounded by other “weird” people, and being in a space where it is accepted and even encouraged. And the feeling of outrage that this isn’t just the case everywhere… that it has taken me 35 years to find a place where I actually did feel that way and that the current world outside of this little bubble is increasingly hostile towards it… 

Certainly the positive feelings outweigh the negative, but they are always there to taint anything joyful, and there’s a certain bitterness that it always leaves me with. 

In all honesty, everything I have written here is an incredibly simplified view of what the furry fandom is. It is a culture that has been in existence since the 70’s and it is quite rich. There is a lot of overlap with queer culture but it is it’s own thing. I am still learning about it myself and I don’t feel informed enough to give a detailed analysis of the history and development over the years. I can only relate what I have experienced so far. And I have greatly enjoyed all of it. There is drama online of course, there always is when people are safely sitting behind a screen, but any in-person interactions I have had have been friendly, welcoming, helpful, and open to curiosity. 

Truth be told, most furries might actually be more tolerant of criticism than I am. At an unrelated event recently, I was with some friends at a local furry bar and a man came in, looking rather uncomfortable. He stopped by us first and asked us if we were furries. We weren’t dressed like it, like many of the patrons were, but we were there enjoying the scene. He then asked us if we were into “all this satanic stuff” at which point, it’s a really good thing one of the friends with me answered that they didn’t think there was anything satanic about animal costumes, because I would not have been nearly as nice as she was. The man moved on and presumably went on to question others in the bar. I thought he would probably get kicked out at some point but no. I didn’t hear any further conversations but there were people there, in full fursuits, who got the guy a drink and some snacks and hung out with him for a while, until he eventually left. All far nicer than I ever would be to someone coming in with a religious and accusatory attitude. 

Maybe someday I will have the patience of a furry. 

Ok, I lost the plot a little bit as I was writing and now I am not sure how to wrap this up so I’ll just reiterate what I started with. Anthro NW was a ton of fun. A comfortable place for weird people and I can’t wait to check out more furry conventions in the future!