629: Skins
| Skins |
 Title text: There's Livejournal drama between those who want to wear human suits over fursuits and those who just take off the fursuits. |
Explanation
Furries, which have been discussed in a previous comic, are people who really like anthropomorphic animals and may enjoy drawing them or dressing up as them. One of the most prominent elements of the furry community is furry conventions, where furries meet-and-greet each other, show off and engage in activities in their fursuits, sell furry-related media, and so on.
Here, Cueball mentions furry identities. The grand majority of furries have a "fursona", that is, a furry animal with which they associate themselves. While there are different approaches towards creating a fursona, they tend to be an animal representation of either themselves or what they wish to be. These fursonas sometimes have quite a bit of background that explains their origins, their abilities, where they live, and their interests... even if their interests involve pretending to be humans. According to Cueball, "skins" are furries who have fursonas that like to pretend to be humans. In other words, skins are humans who pretend to be animals who pretend to be humans. The 4th panel magnifies the ridicule of the concept of skins, the skins at the convention behaving excitedly about events that actual humans usually consider mundane. This is further emphasized by the grammatically-correct but unnatural sounding phrases that they use (which could be similar to how humans imitating animal calls could sound). It is atypical to consider "having a job" to be an activity to emphasize doing in a day (it is more a description of a state of being rather than an activity as such), and even stranger to say that in response to a question about the weather. This concept would be repeated in the title text of 1530: Keyboard Mash.
If this comic satirizes furry conventions, then the title text satirizes fursuits. In this case, there are skins who wear fursuits of their fursonas, but, since their fursonas like to pretend that they are humans, these skins wear human suits over their fursuits. Such a setup would seem unwieldy, so there are skins who avert this by simply taking off their fursuits, going to the conventions as their human selves, thus technically integrating into the whole "skin atmosphere". Possible problems from this can include the "wear a human suit" skins getting angry at the "take off the fursuit" skins for "ruining the fantasy atmosphere" (since, technically, the real-life skin is not the same that would be the fursona's human facade, especially if the skin makes no effort to change the appearance to fit the human facade), or again, because they are too "cheap" or "lazy" to make or otherwise obtain the two suits. This clash of ideals would cause a lot of drama, something that furries (or all other subcultures) are no stranger to.
The person off-screen seems to know something about furries (based upon their response of "Sure..."), and claim to understand this particular nuance of the scene (with a cursory "I see."), but may just be humoring Cueball and would have been happier not to have brought up the issue.
Transcript
- [Cueball is packing luggage.]
- Voice: Where are you going?
- Cueball: Convention.
- Voice: What for?
- Cueball: Well, you know furries, right?
- Voice: Sure...
- [Cueball closes suitcase.]
- Cueball: We're furries whose animal identities have a thing for pretending to be humans.
- Voice: I see.
- [A convention. People sit behind booths in the background.]
- Cueball, with glasses and a mug: How's the weather?
- Megan: Great! I've been driving my car and having a job all day!
- Cueball: Did you meow?
- Megan: Not once!
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refresh comments!Discussion
I'm surprised no furries have commented on this comic, beyond acknowledging it anyway.
I guess it misunderstands furries, though. I mean, the idea of anthropomorphic animals even acknowledging that humans exist would break the illusion and raise lots of weird questions, and hence furry artworks usually do not have humans. Then again, Sonic games have already raised those questions for a while now by prominently having humans. I don't know.
In a world where furries and humans coexisted, I guess furries pretending to be humans would not be convincing at all, and would probably be pretty offensive. 172.69.3.150 16:24, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
- It's possible that the world described in this con is one where animals are humanoid, and "humans" are more animalistic, an inverse of ours.
Our world has humans dress up as amimals, but still do human things with animal-y quirks
Their world would have animals dress up as humans but still do their "humanoid" things with human quirks, eg. not meowing --162.158.246.70 17:39, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
