For me, joining the furry fandom has had a huge impact on my life in a good way. I learned that it’s okay if I’m different or “cringe” as long as what I’m doing is making me happy. I no longer need validation from others that what I’m doing is okay because I now realize that those types of people needlessly bully individuals who do stuff that doesn’t match their definition of “based”. I feel more confident in talking to other people which led me to becoming friends with the best person I’ve ever met who is now my partner.
I’m curious to know your story about joining the fandom and how it has impacted you so I can get to know this community better.
I joined the furry community somewhere in 2009 - the internet was a whole different world at the time. The idea of dynamically fetching content via JavaScript was still “being explored”, in a way.
Initially, I landed on ychan/yiffy.tk and spent a great deal of time there and found many friends. I had landed there, because I was looking for something else, but found a Panty and Stockings rule34 picture and decided to dig down further into this “awkward, odd, but interesting thing”.
To make a long story short: I am german, and my english was bad. Through roleplaying and interactions I learned how to speak and write english so much and drasticaly, that I improved by magnitudes and actually wrote the school’s highest ranked final exam for graduation in my entire year. I also started to run my own community - those who remember who Karma was and what he did, might know what I mean - when the admin started to swing the ban hammer…aimlessly. xD
From there, I maintained the community all the way to 2015. Due to IRL circumstances, I had to let it go. But, it still lives on as a discord server.
In all that time, I have bought many commissions, done a boatload of roleplays, found people to pour my heart out to and find some friends that I have stuck with since. In fact, most of the core-members of the community I founded (Dragon’s Inn) are still my friends!
So yeah, the fandom gave me a lot and I will be forever thankful, which is why I keep using my phoenix icon, although I haven’t bought a commission in a while, let alone roleplayed… It just means too much to me. <3