This is a weird theory but I might argue that most anthro animals are highly symbolic - their forms are specifically neither animal nor human as an IDEALIZATION.
I think that's part of how ferals were a lot more popular in 90s fandom - ferals are more recognition and representation of human AS animal (or in the case of therians, a quadruped animal self image is very intentionally NOT an idealization), less very derived animal traits as a shorthand for idealized humans. If that one makes sense?
｜霜の狼｜人面獣心」
@Leucrotta Dang, I kinda wish we'd had 90s furry if they were less weird about ferals... then again it sounds like they were MORE weird about therians, so.
@Leucrotta But yeah, anthro forms seem VERY correlated with people-who-are-actually-human-just-pretending-to-be-"animal"-while-not-actually-being-animal.
@Leucrotta Also I'd say, beyond just "not an idealization", for therians being feral doesn't have anything to do with "being human" at ALL! 🐺
rambling a bit
@Leucrotta ...I do not get human furries, and don't think I ever will. The concept of "oh yeah I'm an animal haha what do you mean ACTUALLY an animal of course not, I'm human and just pretending (what do you mean you're actually a wolf and actually you not a character, ew WTF)" is so alien to us.
(Stacked with the whole "pretending to be a literal different person" thing (and getting weird if you treat them as a person in their own right!), which I don't think I'll ever get either and is even /more/ alien.)
re: rambling a bit
@frost I feel like festivals, costumes and art are part of the innate nature of humans. Part of what defines humans as *animals*, so it makes sense that theater and fiction would wind up gravitating to animal imagery.
So the role-playing as animals makes sense to me. If you're going to talk about stuff as a spectrum, where one end is a Victorian completely humanocentric view of the universe and the other end are say therians, furry's definitely somewhere on that spectrum.
re: rambling a bit
@Leucrotta (...I feel like I should note that once you get to the therian end, I'm not human in any way >,,>)
(I know you didn't mean to imply that, 'specially since you're therian yourself! It just felt like "Types Of Human: xyz" so yeah, one end of that spectrum is Very Not Human.)
(and edit: it's probably just "human—nonhuman", haha oop. *cough*)
...I wonder if furries are less human [in a good way] than full human-presenting humans.
re: rambling a bit
@Leucrotta There's actually probably TWO spectrums here, human—animal presentation, and human—animal identity.
There's feral human furries, and then there's feral therians like us, and we look identical from the outside but one's human and the other isn't.
re: rambling a bit
@Leucrotta ...but back to your general humanity-vs.-not spectrum and pretendness...
...huh yeah, that's another weird thing about mainstream furry to me. How pretend it all is. Everyone's faking and assumes everyone ELSE is faking too. "We're all just humans faking here, everyone knows that!"
It makes some sort of weird sense when considered in isolation, like how plays are a thing... but it all breaks down when you add us to the mix.
(and it also stops making sense when people get really weird about "this is me but also not", but that's a big tangent.)
re: rambling a bit
@Leucrotta Huhhh. Didn't think of it as a spectrum.