The fourth episode of season three of Down the Rabbit Hole focuses on the furry fandom, a colorful group of people who dress up as and/or draw art of talking animal-people.
Fred begins the video by describing the furry fandom and their prominence in fandom and nerd culture. He goes into the origins of furries and discusses how the mid-century comic book and cartoon industries took inspiration from Japanese Manga and the success of characters like Mickey Mouse. He talks about the Funny Animals comic genre, a type of comic book featuring talking animal people, and how comic book and scifi nerds in the 80s who had an affinity for animal-people eventually formed the first proper "furry" groups. Fred goes into how the high tolerance of gay and lewd content and activity at early furry meetups eventually led to a splinter group who called themselves the Burned Furs and took upon the goal of purifying the furry fandom's image. The video ends with an observation that the modern furry movement is more widespread than ever before, with furries being spread across the internet in all kinds of online communities.
Tropes that apply to this episode
- Author Avatar: Most (nearly all) furries create a character known as a Fursona, which is a cartoon animal person that represents them in their artwork.
- Breather Episode: A comparatively light episode compared to The Final Fantasy House that came before it.
- Cross-Cast Role: One of the Burned Furs letters mentions how some furries will choose a female fursona to represent themselves despite being male-presenting otherwise.
- Moral Guardians: A focus of one part of the video is on the "Burned Furs" movement, a short-lived group of furries in the 80s with the goal of cleaning up the fandom's image by censoring suggestive and queer content that might have been unpalatable to a general audience of the time.
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Older Than They Think: Though the fandom didn't gain wider attention until the '00s, the furry fandom has existed since the 1980s and is based on trends in the comic book scene that go as far back as the 1950s and 60s. - Popular with Furries: The furry community reacted positively to this episode for being a fair and unbiased take on the early furry fandom.
- Vocal Minority: Explicitly called out as a major factor in the internet's often negative perception of furries.
