I have tried to write this so many times, and for days, I cannot come up with a brief and concise way to express my point. Furries have suffered persecution. One tangible piece of evidence of this dates back to 1928 when John Galsworthy said in his forward to Bambi, “I do not, as a rule, like the method which places human words in the mouths of dumb creatures...” Even though it seemed alright for Disney to make talking animal cartoons for children, it was not generally accepted that adults or even children over a certain age were allowed to like them. Peer pressure, even within the family, silenced Furry fans. Even in the Sci-Fi conventions before we had our own cons, the people who expressed themselves as Furry were seen as frightfully bizarre because here is a group of fans of someone else's work, and there happens to be maybe one person who in some way expresses their appreciation or yearning for something that didn't even have a word to describe it at the time.
To fight to express one's self in the fullest without any group to latch onto, well, yes I consider that unique and original. When the first Furry convention came into existence there was still confusion as to what to call ourselves; the attendees relation to the con was described in paragraphs not single terms. I don't think anyone knew in expressible terms what it was they sought, but somewhere between that first con and the time I found the fandom, the term Furry Lifestyler came into existence, and that is what those trailblazers sought.
For all my life, without any guides or clues, I sought what I would discover is called Furry. When I walked through those doors and found that I was not alone in how I thought and what I wanted even though I had grown up isolated from any sense of a community, well... No, this story is not unique because so many others have experienced the exact same thing, but somehow this happened. Like soulmates who are drawn to one another, we are drawn to ideas, ideals, and a community that we created from nothing but a spark from within, and this happened despite great difficulty of people trying to force us to act otherwise.
I do not know how you define creative, but we created ourselves. I do not know how you define original and unique, to the outside world we may appear to have gone from oddity to hobby, but somehow we happened. Even if the rest of the world has forgotten, that to me, is a little more than unique; it is a miracle.
I have tried to write this so many times, and for days, I cannot come up with a brief and concise way to express my point. Furries have suffered persecution. One tangible piece of evidence of this dates back to 1928 when John Galsworthy said in his forward to Bambi, “I do not, as a rule, like the method which places human words in the mouths of dumb creatures...” Even though it seemed alright for Disney to make talking animal cartoons for children, it was not generally accepted that adults or even children over a certain age were allowed to like them. Peer pressure, even within the family, silenced Furry fans. Even in the Sci-Fi conventions before we had our own cons, the people who expressed themselves as Furry were seen as frightfully bizarre because here is a group of fans of someone else's work, and there happens to be maybe one person who in some way expresses their appreciation or yearning for something that didn't even have a word to describe it at the time.
To fight to express one's self in the fullest without any group to latch onto, well, yes I consider that unique and original. When the first Furry convention came into existence there was still confusion as to what to call ourselves; the attendees relation to the con was described in paragraphs not single terms. I don't think anyone knew in expressible terms what it was they sought, but somewhere between that first con and the time I found the fandom, the term Furry Lifestyler came into existence, and that is what those trailblazers sought.
For all my life, without any guides or clues, I sought what I would discover is called Furry. When I walked through those doors and found that I was not alone in how I thought and what I wanted even though I had grown up isolated from any sense of a community, well... No, this story is not unique because so many others have experienced the exact same thing, but somehow this happened. Like soulmates who are drawn to one another, we are drawn to ideas, ideals, and a community that we created from nothing but a spark from within, and this happened despite great difficulty of people trying to force us to act otherwise.
I do not know how you define creative, but we created ourselves. I do not know how you define original and unique, to the outside world we may appear to have gone from oddity to hobby, but somehow we happened. Even if the rest of the world has forgotten, that to me, is a little more than unique; it is a miracle.