Fur Affinity

FurAffinity is an art-based website devoted to all things furry and anthro, run by Sean "Dragoneer" Piche. One is bound to find a wide variety of creative works on FA, ranging from music to stories to art and photography; while it's not unheard of to find non-furry-centric work on the site, the vast majority of submissions to the site are centered around anthropomorphic/furry characters.

FA does its best to compete against Deviant ART, at least as far as giving an artistic outlet to the furry community. Unlike DA, FA allows a much broader range of content (read: smut), and since there's a perceived bias against furry artists on other art sites (DA included), FA is traditionally a furry's first stop for new furry artwork. Because of its sheer size, it has become the de facto Friending Network for most furries as well.

How you feel about the site depends on how you feel about the furry fandom: It can be a nice place to look at anthro art -- or it could be a very bad case of Rule 34 gone wild.

Expect downtimes and drama. In large quantities.

Tropes used in Fur Affinity include:

• Animal Stereotypes: Very, very common.
• Artistic License Biology: Not so much the "anthro" aspects, but the fact that some art is uploaded into animal categories which they clearly do not belong.
• Art Major Biology
• Artist Avatar: The vast majority of the FA userbase has one.
• Bait and Switch: Many artists like to use a Visual Pun and fool their viewers by using a thumbnail with a warning label on it to indicate an "adult" picture, except the actual picture is something completely harmless. A Troll will do the complete opposite. Expect this trope to come in full force every year on April Fool's Day.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Rednef has prominent boobs but no nipples (of course). Ironically, Fender does have visible nipples in his official incarnations, making this a rare inversion from how it usually works with furries.
• Brain Bleach: Some people love to Troll and put really disgusting things in the "general" section to bypass the mature filter...purely to be a little jerk.
• Complaining About Things You Haven't Paid For: Quite a problem among people that ask for requests (artist draws something for someone, no strings attached) and trades (two artists draw something for each other as an exchange). It is reasonable to ask an artist to change some details, but sometimes people complain about such tiny details that they think are either flawed or were omitted/forgotten. This type of whining has resulted in many artists who either keep very tight restrictions on how people can get a request or trade from them or people may resort to only doing commissions so as to filter out people trying to mooch off the artist.
  • Often invoked regarding the site itself, as well, though its owner made it clear that he does not condemn people for expecting reliable service despite the site being free.
• Don't Like, Don't Read: You often look like an absolute dick complaining about something in the adult section with the mature filter off. Though, granted, you can find a hell of a lot worse than just porn on the site (and, for the longest time, the only way to filter it out was to filter out everything that wasn't 100% family-friendly).
• Entitled Bastard: In 2012, someone found a Loophole Abuse that let them post ridiculously large avatars, and encouraged others to make huge avatars specifically to break the site. Then they complained when they were suspended and started to call the admins "unfair".
• Even Nerds Have Standards: Anyone who admits to actual zoophilia gets banned from the forums (and usually from the site itself). People who draw furries in diapers often get in trouble as well, but some people seem to get around this.
  • While it's not banned, there's a strong dislike of Sonic, Pokémon and Digimon OCs. (Dragoneer gets a free pass because he's...you know, the administrator.)
• Executive Meddling: 2010 saw an unconditional ban instituted against so-called "cub porn" (underage anthro characters depicted in sexual activity); the admins said that the ban was not so much because of the content itself, but because Fur Affinity's advertising sponsors were starting to cut funding off.
• Expy: Many Digimon and Pokemon OCs, some with the same personalities as their original counterparts. One of the founders' Author Avatar is a Guilmon/Monodramon expy, except bigger, purple and subjected to fetish of the week (sometimes with Guilmon along for the ride).
• Fantastic Racism: Both in stories, and on the site; for instance, if you represent yourself as a dragon, people are likely to think you're stuck up. The community's instability being what it is, it's likely that someone's going to verbally assault you unless you choose a species nobody's heard of like Okapi.
  • The reason for the Fantastic Racism against dragons is because dragons are considered to be a sort of Mary Sue type animal, mainly because the person who has the dragon persona can make up as many Sue-isms for their character to have, since their dragon is always different. The same applies really to anyone who has a mythological creature as their persona.
• Furry Fandom
• Hypocrite / Hypocritical Fandom: Several members are often found faving art trends they tend to hate, or claiming about being so trolled only to be trolling several other members themselves.
• Het Is Ew: Not many members argue this per se, but a surprising number are only accepting of gays or bisexuals.
  • Everyone Is Gay or Everyone Is Bi also can count. Purely-straight people are a statistical minority in the Furry Fandom as a whole, after all. Though at least a majority still like the opposite sex in some way or another.
• Loophole Abuse: Avatars were not filtered by the mature filter, so people with the mature filter turned on would be disgusted by NSFW avatars. A rule was eventually put into place to close the loophole, and avatars must not exceed PG-13 content.
• Mascot with Attitude: Most of the "punkier" furries. Also, Sonic OCs (though the rest of the site absolutely hates them).
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Site mascot Fender is a ferret/fox, but he looks more like a raccoon.
• Mr. Fanservice: Any decently drawn muscular male furry (mostly wolves or dragons) with little clothing on will draw comments about how hot they are.
• Ms. Fanservice: It's pretty rare to find female characters who aren't created for this reason. Even the ones that are their creators' Author Avatars.
• NSFW: See Rule 34
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Averted more often than played straight, but draws more attention when it's played straight. (There's also an odd variant where female furries sometimes have Multi Boobage even when male furries in the same drawing have normal human pecs.)
• Our Dragons Are Different: You can find that they "support" all the major dragon types (western, eastern, wyvern, etc.), although good luck finding them all being drawn up.
  • For that matter, unicorns, gryphons and, albeit less commonly, phoenixes.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Most interpret them as anthro wolves.
• Rage Quit: Any artist who want to leave one final message of them leaving forever will usually post a journal either explaining why they are leaving or just a simple Screw This, I'm Outta Here. Trolls are highly attracted to these and bonus points if the artist and/or the people commenting cause drama.
• Rule 34: And How! One of the biggest sources of not only the porn itself, but of proof that there really are "no exceptions".
• Serious Business: Dur. Complaining about a person who commissioned something from you or an artist you commissioned from may seem like making a mountain out of a molehill...until you realize a lot of the times people are complaining about it, they actually paid real life money.
• Sdrawkcab Name: Rednef, who originally came around as an April Fools' joke.
• Shout-Out: Some of the banners.
  • This one is a Calvin and Hobbes homage.
  • In honor of the show's second season, they adopted a banner with a My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic theme.
• Sitcom Arch Nemesis: Deviant ART. Its former administrator Scott "Jark" Jarkoff once banned all furry and anthro art from appearing on the front page, and there's still a lot of bitterness between both sites even though that ban is no longer in effect.
• Site Breaking Bug: Let's just say the site is not known for its strict QA. By and large, broken features (except newly-added ones) are more likely to be removed than fixed.
• Start My Own: What kicked off FA's creation was a sudden ban on pornographic material on fellow Deviant ART clone SheezyArt. And on the flip side of the coin, a number of competing sites have been started since then out of dissatisfaction with FA.
• Sturgeon's Law: The site has minimal screening, no like/dislike bar or star ratings, and there's no options to organize art by most times viewed or favorited. If you want to screen the bad art, your best bet is to find an artist you like and see what art they have in their favorites.
• Trolls: What would you expect on a furry site? Nequ is one of the better-known ones, writing stories that look like they're going to be sexual before going somewhere else entirely.
  • Some people intentionally put disgusting avatars just to annoy people with the filter on or most recently, breaking the site with disgustingly huge avatars.
• Viewers Like You: One of the larger sites to be primarily donation-based, though it still takes in a bit of money from sidebar ads.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: There are artists who abandoned the site due to harassment and art theft (amongst other things).
• Yiff