I've been in that building (The Furry Fandom) a long damned time. How long? Well, some of you voting this November weren't born yet when I posted my first furry website. Yeah...
Historically we've had an image problem, and when I say problem I mean we still had issues with "Furry Panic". In America especially, people were still getting their heads around the whole "not all gay men are child-rapists" concept. Playing Werewolf as a lifestyle choice, even without the "yiffy" undertones, would actually frighten people. I can remember so many people asking me when I'd "grow out of" cartoon animals, or would just tell me it was weird even creepy. It was a "juvenile delinquent" friend of mine who even told me what Furry was, and he thought it was gross.
Back in 2000, there was one furry, an honest-to-goodness, Disney hand-drawn animator (and one of the best), who was literally terrified he'd lose his job if one of his "naughty" pics got out. Heck, if they even knew he was drawing at conventions. Put this in perspective, a 2-D animator: hard to find, almost impossible to replace, but the moment his real name got out, he vanished. Maybe he was paranoid, but for contrast here, some of the Zootopia artists has been publically trading naughty jokes with lots of us on Twitter.
There was once a long dry spell. Think about this: in the early 20th century, the Looney Tunes days, 80% of the cartoons were about animals. Bugs, Daffy, Sylvester, Porky. Also, Mickey, Goofy, Pete, Woody Woodpecker, Tom and Jerry. All of them made dozens, even hundreds of short films and the public couldn't get enough. The "Funny Animal" was a genre unto itself that continued going strong all the way into the 60's and 70's with stuff like The Chipmunks and Pink Panther. The recently revived Captain Carrot was a direct result of their popularity. The 80s gave us the Disney Afternoon which stayed strong all the way to the early 90s.
Where did they all go?
We went from the Golden Age of Animation to the Street Sharks to zilch. Sure, we've had plenty of feature films, but except for Kung Fu Panda they're not terribly "anthropomorphic". Some of us actually believed it was our fault. So much, that we more or less treated our own creations like contraband. It was hard to imagine anyone in the industry didn't know about us and say, "Yeah, but those Furry Fans..." (YEESH! Imagine if they could have seen the Bronies back then.) There were rumors that having furries in your project was a kiss of death. To be fair, Street Sharks was the sign of a furry surplus. With all those knock-offs, we probably should have blamed the Turtles. After all, they set the target age group at 8. And boy.
So, Furry has kind of been slumming it for a while. My expectations for Zootopia were cautiously pessimistic. After years of scraps and crap, all I wanted was "not bad" -- I wasn't expecting to see one of the very best movies period. It's perfect. I don't know how it could have been done better, and somehow animals are neither a gimmick or a thin metaphor. It's a thoroughly modern fable, and one kids and some adults today badly need. This is a movie I'm utterly proud of, and eager to share confidently on its own merits.
Moreover, I'm proud to know that furries were involved with it and they're damned proud of it. I'm proud that Disney's proud of it and won't apologize for dancing tigers. I'm proud that it's ours, it can't be denied, and it's really really good. I feel redeemed somehow. The world is different now. We're here, and nobody seems to mind. Heck! It looks like some people might even like us.