Editing Furry (section)

== Some positive advice ==
So you have probably read this far and been wondering, "If you are a furry, how would the people on this site actually want you to act, besides dying?" Well, everyone is different, and other people have different levels of 'fur-tolerance' based on how far their Hive World is to Holy Terra. No strategy for avoiding getting hunted is perfect, but here is a survival-guide for how to be a furry in places like this:

===Don't involve kids or real animals===
This should be self-explanatory; if you have any fetishes relating to the two WE DO NOT want to hear about it and recommend you stop and seek professional help for everyone's sake (including yours) ASAP. If you do mention it outside of that context or the designated Discord server for your fetish, do not be surprised if you are booted out of the site/board and possibly have the feds sicced onto you, because nobody who has any semblance of a moral compass would tolerate involving those two categories in NSFW shit.

===Be chill. Seriously, always be chill===
[[File:The Furries reaction to FURRY APOCALYPSE.jpg|thumb|This is some Furries reaction to a Furry Genocide Animation. So much for being a perpetually triggered community.]]
One of the most frequent positive things you'll hear from normal people with furry friends is how "chill" they are. That exact word keeps coming up. How do you do this? Don't get upset if you can help it. If your friend shows you something anti-furry as a joke, even if you don't like it, claim that you found it funny. People will often slowly start to find you more tolerable if you are tolerable of them!

(Or, in simple terms: Don't be the top page image whenever someone says they don't like furry stuff.)

===Don't have too many fucked-up fetishes===
Having a furry fetish is a given regarding this, (asexual furries do exist, though) but if you like anything like scat, or gore, or [[Chakat|anything gross like that]], '''keep it to yourself'''. 99% of people here don't want to hear about that shit. You want to share that stuff with someone? Go to the dedicated Discord server or fetish site and share it there (if it crosses certain lines, like animals or kids in the point above, see the first point for what to do).

===If you are an artist, or writer, take criticism===
Many Furries are artists, and nobody is gonna take your work seriously if you don't let them try and help you improve it. Unhelpful criticism does exist and you're almost certain to get some assholes who just want to bash on you, but the real critics are the ones trying to help you by pointing out flaws and suggesting ways of correcting them. Even if you don't agree with their advice, you should take it respectfully and actually consider what they are saying, and how it can affect what you are making. 

Speaking of which, here's a few bits of advice for writing:
*Please don't make the Furry species in your story ze Übermensch (in the [[Mary Sue]] sense of the word, not the Nietzschean one.) This is a good general principle for writers as a whole, but many terrible Furry-written stories heavily feature this kind of "[[Chakats|Muh super-special OC race is the best and perfect in all things!]]" bullshit, so there's going to be even less slack cut than usual.
*Try and make sure your Furry species has traits beyond "Is Sexy," "Is morally perfect," and the like. A boring or one-note species only makes the negative traits stand out even more, which is exacerbated even further by the tendency of bad Furry authors to get so wrapped up in masturbating over how sexy/moral/perfect their creations are that they forget to make them ''actually interesting''. That, in turn, leads into the above issue of slack not being cut because people are Done With this Shit<sup>'''TM'''</sup> and don't want to slog through pages of authorial masturbation over how great their creation is.
*Leading on from the above: be judicious with sexualisation. Unless it's porn or smutty romance, spending multiple paragraphs prattling on about how sexy your Furry creation is will probably turn off casual readers, particularly if you suddenly segue into it from an entirely unrelated subject. This goes double for those with more overtly fucked-up fetishes, as excessive sexualisation only makes these look even worse to the average reader.
*If humans are bastards or the real monsters in your story, try and handle it delicately. Give it some nuance, rather than making every human (bar one or two token "good" characters) into one-dimensional, moustache-twirling caricatures straight out of terribly written [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|HFY wank-fics]]. Similar to the first point, a lot of badly-written Furry works heavy-handedly portray humanity as incorrigibly evil bastards, so poor handling risks people dropping it due to the association.

===Don't be obsessive about it===
This is technically a continuation of point 2, but this deserves clarification: you can have it be a part of your life, you can have it be a significant part of your life, but DO NOT let it become your entire life. Have other hobbies and make friends outside your own direct interests to gain some interesting new perspectives. Some furries think of the community as an entire lifestyle unto itself. THIS IS NOT HEALTHY. Don't think like this. Furries can be a lot of things, but being one should not become your entire existence online (or IRL, for that matter).

===Respect the fandom and the lore===
This is related to points 2 & 5 and it basically means that you should not try to shoehorn your fetish/OC/fanfiction where it does not belong. If you play a game, work within the bounds of its universe. If the 'verse has anthros or beastmen - fine, go ahead and play your OC/Fursona/whatever. If it does not, either drop it or come up with a damn good reason why they should be included. 

40k has a good example with the Felinids - they are a poorly described feline-like species of abhumans that you can theoretically have as Furry [[Your Dudes]] (Imperial Guard), but if you are going to have them as an IG army, make them grounded in the setting (i.e.: more meat for the grinder of the IoM's wars, not some uber-sexualised [[Mary Sue]] regiment). If you're still stuck on this point: [[Fur Heresy]] is a great example of what NOT to do when inserting your Furry characters into a setting.

This advice should help your overall acceptance/begrudging tolerance in websites like this. Your mileage may vary, terms and conditions apply, see store for details. There are many reasonable examples on why people here would/do hate furries, and although most would never admit it, a good half of this community would probably be interested in something that undeniably falls under the 'Furry Media' category - if the creator had a brain in his head, put effort into writing, made interesting artwork, and didn't take themselves too seriously.

The Furry fandom and furries have seen a greater degree of acceptance by the larger internet and IRL community and YOU are in a position to improve upon this. Watch, listen, respect, and be better.