My life as a furry grad student

[altivo]

Found while searching through accumulated junk for something else...

Proof that I was a furry before I knew about "Furry":

Furry Illumination, 1990 A page from a library school assignment in which we were required to create imitations of at least six different styles of manuscript book page. This example represents the pointed Gothic style, common in Europe from about 1200 to 1500. Only the style of handwriting was required, but I added colors to several and an illustration to this one. Anthropomorphic rabbits, anyone? ^_^ (Click image to enlarge.)

Oh, if anyone wonders, the assignment was worth 8 points. I did seven different examples, and got the full point count.

Comments

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Very nice :) did you do well in penmanship?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes. And I still can if I sit properly and take the time. I much prefer to write with a fountain pen, in fact. ;p

[kakoukorakos.livejournal.com]

Don't know how long ago I lamented the decline of handwriting in my LJ, but I think while digital writing has its benefits, we've lost quite a lot as the art of handwriting and composition is falling by the wayside. Digital is definitely as huge a leap as the invention of the printing press was, but every time the mechanical component of the process facilitates distribution, it seems like quality and care takes a serious dive. It's a fantastic experience to handle old manuscripts even through the cotton gloves...there's just something so personal about them, even if they were just monks playing copy machine.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. Just like any other historic object (I mentioned some Roman coins and showed an image of them a while back) I am attracted to the idea of age and use, and love to speculate about the maker and everyone who handled the item through its history. That we can read such things and make sense of them is just that much more wonderful. Of course, real MS are not usually as legible as my examples. I've spent hours trying to make out stuff in that awful script used for Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, the Insular Hand. If you look at the other examples found in the same gallery as the one I showed here, you'll find that the Insular is conspicuous by its absence. ;p

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I have to add, since I suspect you will be aware of it, that the printed books created by William Morris at his Kelmscott Press in the latter half of the 19th C. are superb examples of how technology can still be used to serve the same aesthetic as the original handwritten original. I have had the privilege of leafing through some of these, with cotton gloves as you so aptly point out, and they are simply elegant and beautifully proportioned.

[kakoukorakos.livejournal.com]

It's really a matter of how much effort people put into the process...if they labor over the printing process, they can pull off a result as personal as handwriting even if they have the fruit of that labor captured by a plate that can replicate the feat. I think it's much the same with high-quality art prints and lithographs. But with many production-line engraved plates, movable type, or laser printers...the personal touches and care just doesn't get transmitted. It becomes more mechanical than art.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, and of course Morris supervised the whole process, designing the type to look like hand calligraphy, casting the letters in his own foundry, setting them by hand, printing on a hand press, etc.

[atomicat.livejournal.com]

I always new there'd be a community like this, as far back as the early 80's. Well, I was wired already back then and the writing was on the wall. When you can crawl through Bitnet to find that one person on the other side of the world who's an expert in mollusk secretions, how big of a jump is it to find those with a heavy interest in anthropomorphics? Plug me in baby!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

My brother and I were doing furry roleplay games in the 1950s, and I did more of the same with classmates in school through the 1960s. But it's very much like being gay. You may well be that way, and not realize that you aren't alone. I knew I was "different" in both ways, gay and furry, but didn't find a gay community until I was a graduate student in the mid-1970s and didn't really discover furry fandom until the early 1990s when I finally hit the internet and FurryMUCK.

[atomicat.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Community... *jealous* Ah well, I'm here now.

[dongstyle-ltd.livejournal.com]

Heh, I reckon one ought to do a retrospective survey that looks into one's *furriness*. I myself know that I was drawn to anthropomorphic characters and animals in general long before I knew about the online furry community (that was when I was 14, as opposed to my TV viewing preferences and other things from a young child).

It might actually help differentiate between those who identify with furry because they *are*, and those who do so for social, political identity reasons.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Hmmm? I didn't think anyone identified with furry just for social or political reasons. Here in the US, furry seems to be widely regarded as a perversion or at least an undesirable deviation.

[dongstyle-ltd.livejournal.com]

I probably should have explained myself a little better, but as of late I've been largely incoherent. It sounds a little counter-intuitive, but sometimes I suspect that there is a real distinction to be made between those who specifically or even exclusively are drawn to that which furry encapsulates (i.e. attraction to anthropomorphic characters), and those (mainly adolescents) who are drawn to the group because of how their process of individualisation has manifested- I was thinking along the lines of those who use furry as a means of socialisation and eventually might drop out of the scene and furry altogether when they seem to pick up more of a "real life". Upon further reflection, I'd be more than willing to accept that these are, for most of the cases of adolescents "joining the ranks of furry", one and the same thing not least because furry apparently falls so far afoul of normative standards, and besides, such a judgment could only be made on a case-by-case basis initially anyway.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I don't pay a lot of attention to the under 21 crowd, and I always assumed that some of them would fall by the wayside anyway. When I see them, they seem to be mostly interested in rebellious and antisocial kinds of behavior, so perhaps you are right. For the most part, they don't seem particularly "furry" to me anyway. Maybe it's just that people with green hair and black lipstick don't seem real at all.

[animist.livejournal.com]

That's a fascinating idea. It brings to mind my association with the Science Fiction and Fantasy fandom as a teenager and in myn early twenties. I am sure that many of the people I know then who read the books and played the roleplaying games dropped that past time long ago by now, but for me, it has been an important part of my life and influenced my outlook on the world.

Is this an example of what you allude to?

[goldenstallion.livejournal.com]

Dear Rider,

There is something exciting about writing off-the-cuff and ad-libbing as you go. Roleplay on, say, FurryMuck or Taps. Making up a scene or even an entire story as you go with another furson is one of my very favorite things and I am fairly good at it now.

Has improved my spelling, punctuation, grammar and style, and even my normal thought processes. Usually does for everybody.

So when ya coming aboard for another ride, Rider?

Imperator lifts his wing and offers his back for a ride.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh. I've been on and off Taps and FM over the last week hoping to find you but without any success.

Tivo quickly ducks under your wing and places his hands on your withers, jumping lightly to your back and settling there.

[heavens-steed.livejournal.com]

Wow Tivo, that is really beautiful and very cool :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I'm a frustrated musician and artist, obviously.

The other examples of calligraphy are in the same gallery now if you want to see them.

[farhoug.livejournal.com]

Would that be a gothic style rabbit then too? =)

One more skill to learn, that one... I tried calligraphy once or twice, but without a lot more practice it's wasn't going anywhere. And then came the computers. =)

Didn't know one could construct ligatures with that style of writing either...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

His ears do look like they need flying buttresses, don't they? :) The other examples are in that same gallery if you want to see them.

[octatonic.livejournal.com]

Well done. You get, not only, polite applause,
but the assignment to do the whole Book Of
Common Prayer in illuminated furry manuscript.

You'll get 9 points for it.

^_^

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I don't collect points any more, at least not that kind. But if you look in the same gallery you'll find some other examples from the Book of Common Prayer. My master's in library science was awarded by Dominican University, a religious foundation, so it seemed appropriate at the time to use religious texts. I wanted them in English, so I wasn't about to use the Tridentine Missal or anything of that sort. Anyway, using quotes from Tolkien or T.S. Eliot would have been anachronistic, no?