I’ve been involved in the furry fandom, in various aspects, since the early 80’s…
For me it all began with “Albedo Anthropomorphics”, an independent comic published by Thoughts & Images that I discovered and became enamored with in ’84… Back then there was no Internet or anything, so the “funny animal” culture that was available only really existed in comics – and I was lucky enough to have a pretty amazing comics shop in my home town.
I suppose technically my decent into furry hell actually began with “Cerebus the Aardvark” in the early 80’s, but Albedo was the first ‘pure’ anthropomorphic setting and story I became engrossed in.
In 1986 I left home, joined the Navy, and ended up within easy driving distance of a Newbury Comics in Worcester Massachusetts. This dramatically increased my exposure to independent comics full of anthropomorphic critters from publishers like GraphXpress, Eclipse, Warp, Thoughts & Images, and others.
I still have some of the comics I picked up from that Newbury Comics…
While I was a definite devotee of all things fury by 1987, I didn’t get my high-priest’s robes until 1988 with the publication of Vicky Wyman’s “Xanadu”… Xanadu, with its interesting social caste system and high-fantasy setting quickly became a part of the roleplay setting I was running, and that not only cemented my furryness but also drug a dozen other people into the fandom as well.
The RP setting carried the funny animal torch through to the early 90’s when I left the Navy. Fortunately with the advent of newsgroups such as alt.fan.furry and alt.fan.dragons, and then things like IRC, FurryMuck, and Alfandria throughout the 90’s, I was able to keep not only the RP setting alive but stay active in the fandom.
While I had attended numerous gaming and scifi conventions since my high-school years in the 80’s, I didn’t attend a dedicated “furry” convention until Confurence East in 1996.
I did CFEast in ’96, CF8 in ’97, and CF9 in ’98.
CF9 was my last “furry” convention as the fandom convention setting in general seemed to be departing ‘funny animals’ and was instead becoming more of a ‘furry kink’ sort of thing… Which is fine, different strokes for different folks and all – but it wasn’t my scene anymore.
After CF9 I mostly dropped out of the fandom, only getting involved again in early 2004 with SecondLife where I’ve continued to haunt the virtual world to this very day.
Listening to "Take Me Away" by FM Attack