One of the chief reasons I left DeviantArt -- and have momentarily "returned" to chronicle the how and why of my departure if only to utilise some much-needed talk therapy -- was, in fact, Furries.

The clique-nature of this site, of the furries in particular, is truly more appalling than anything else DevArt subjects me to -- ugly people who think they look so damn good cosplaying as an anime character a thousand times hotter than them, an artist who draws shit and insists on how "kawaii" it is -- to name but a precious few.

In fact, one of the reasons that I hate the Furry "community" -- one of the reasons I strongly supported their expulsion from y! Gallery -- is their insufferable head-shoved-in-asshole isolationism.

You will notice that all the notable furries on this site know each other -- some through their own merits, many of them because they are morally bankrupt to sleep around to get attention...which the "community" duly gives them.

This latter category consists of people whose characters and fursonas appear time and again in the galleries of other furry artists -- there is no reason for this, no reason at all, because the person the picture was drawn for has no real merit except money, or sex, and the willingness to give either.

Regardless, I have swallowed my pride and better judgment both, to make it so that these are the very people -- the furry "community", as they deign to call themselves -- whose attention I seek, with the continued production and eventual publication of Phillipe.

A furry novel, a serious furry novel, with wonderfully-done illustrations. An attempt to bring furry fiction out of the Yiffstar shit-hole and make it something respectable and reputable. How could, I have surmised, it be passed up?

Yet all of it has been, I should mention, largely to no avail.

This is a source of supreme irritation: Phillipe, never leaves my mind and indeed forms some of the more lucid and creative moments I've yet had. I love and cherish my creation, something many authors actually don't do.

Furthermore, the illustrations by Tiggstar are the best muse an author could ask for, almost exclusively commissioned and worked upon for the express purpose of illustrating the book or providing much-needed inspiration.

Furries seem to move in herds -- I won't say "packs", it would gratify them entirely too much! -- and have a hivemind mentality. If a well-known furry publically ignores or loves or hates something, it automatically becomes the enthusiastic status quo, no matter how dubious or, frankly, stupid.

I have been described as a "furry", and indeed the "Foxboy" moniker would imply it as such -- to say nothing of the drawings of my fursona -- but I must insist I refute such a label. I am a Therian, happy to be a fox-man / fox-boy in a deeply spiritual and even physical sense, not dressing like one, not wanting to "yiff" the next person I see.

The expression "finding one's tail" boils my blood -- you cannot "decide" to be a furry, as you cannot "decide" to be gay.

One anonymous person in particular is nauseatingly abrasive with his constant insistence on "being a fox", calling his significant other "his mate", and describing masturbation as "pawing off" -- these are terms hardcore furries (at times Therians too) use all the time, but this person is using them as out-of-hand convenience, because he has suddenly and without provocation or reason "decided" he "is" a furry.

Both of these idea's are almost certain to fly over heads, and explaining to someone that believing you are part-fox, and dressing up like Disneyland From Hell, are two vastly different things...it just doesn't work. As lucid as the argument is, the furry "community" is too shallow to comprehend it.

Getting back to Phillipe: it is precisely because so many (not all, but I estimate probably 90%) of furries are shallow, that many people see Tiggstar's illustrations of the Blackwood family or Phillipe himself or anything else she might draw in the future, squeal over them, think I'm the one that did them, and -- to insult to injury -- never actually bother to read the accompanying text.

Reading and furries, I suppose, don't mix well. Reading well, anyhow.

As for exceptions to this rule -- I know of approximately two other people in the furry "fandom" (or really just people who describe themselves as somehow part-animal as myself, and are thus "associated" with furries) aside from myself who are decent authors, attentively constructive critics, and all around "good people" when it comes to the literary sphere.

But wait...perhaps then, my writing is shit -- not actually worthy of the praise I wish to receive, and certainly not worthy of the attention I crave. Perhaps too, Tiggstar is "too good" of an artist for me, and that my characters are not suited to be drawn by a master manga-artist as herself.

I doubt it.

I am not afraid to say, anymore, that I loathe the furry "community", that its pratfalls of indolence and idiocy was one of the main reasons for driving me off of this site.