Well, I guess they would've found out sooner or later. When I told my mom (she's extremely open minded BTW) about me being a furry, she had already heard of some of the negative stereotypes. So I explained, yes, there are SOME that do some of those things. But for the most part, it's just a community of people who like anthropomorphic/cartoon animals and they like to create their own characters and sometimes dress up as their characters for fun and to be silly. With every group/fandom, you'll end up with a few extremists that take it out of hand, but there are FAR LESS of the strange ones compared to the regular people who just like anthropomorphic/cartoon animals.

She completely understood and has no problems with it. So far, I've told my mom and my sister. I don't have a dad, so I don't gotta worry about telling him. The only other people that I live with that I haven't told yet, is my little brother and my sisters boyfriend because I'm afraid of their reaction.

I hope your parents would understand. Just don't act so suspicious about it because then they would get worried and think you're doing something wrong and get upset. Just take the time to fully explain what and why you're a furry. Good luck.

Thanks. They are accepting it better than I thought they would. I still have to figure out what they truly think of it though. I told them that it's one of the most difficult things to explain due to the variety but I'm not sure how convinced they are. I'm not very artistic, so this is in the opposite direction of what they would have thought. I'm autistic and think of almost nothing but mechanical stuff, so it's understandable why they're confused by the sudden interest. I'm just not sure what they're going to do next. They seemed half convinced that I needed to find a local tech group, but I'm not really wanting to. I enjoy working on my own projects more than an assignment from a teacher. So far I've told them that I've made friends here in the tech fields and am interested in going to a con to meet other people. I just hope that if I go they don't have to tag along. My dad is one of those people who wants to get out of public ASAP. I don't find it too fun because he starts pulling me around the building rather than letting me look at what I want. They were showing interest in meeting somebody within the community though so they can get to know how it works. That's where another problem comes in. I can't find anybody local. I live in the middle of a corn field! I can't even hear the neighbors shooting their guns from my house if that gives you an idea of how spread out my "town" is. It's already 4 AM and I'm still hyped up from telling them. I guess it's a good thing that school has been canceled for tomorrow.

Despite how difficult they may be about this whole furry thing, look at it this way. They are just looking out for you and they want to make sure that it's safe for you and that you're doing something productive. I'm not very artistic myself and I practically have no creativity at all. I've been obsessed with electronics and computers all my life and I pretty much spend every waking moment thinking about or working on electronics and computers. So even I was surprised that I liked something other than computers and electronics. I would hate living in such a town like that. I can see how hard it would be to find someone local that's also a furry. I have found quite a few local furs in my town. Heck, I even see this one car driving around near my house a lot and it has paw prints on it and the word furry on the bumper, but I'm just too shy and afriad to try to contact them. That's another surprising thing about me. I've always been socially akward and a loner that preferred to be non social. I enjoy my solitude and never sought to get out and meet people. FA is the first social thing I ever started to do online and I really suck at being social. I'm absolutely shocked I got this far along in the fandom myself and that I'm even talking to people right now.

Oh, sorry for taking so long to respond. I haven't been on FA much lately.

Being a furry is nothing to be ashamed of, so my advice is to not treat it that way. Don't act like this is something to cover up, if people are really people, (and not rude jerks) they will ether not care or be on your side. Your parents have to love you, and there's no way something like this could change that. Sure there are people in the furry community that will make things weird, but that can be said for any fandom or hobby group. It doesn't have any reflection on you as a person. So try not to worry, chances are things will be better now that they know, I mean the longer you have it hidden, the more troublesome it looks.

I've been trying to get used to the fact that they know but I feel like I've made the conversations between me and my parents even more awkward. Before I told them, I was always close to letting it slip out but now that they know, I have noticed that they are looking at me differently. Maybe this is just a phase and they're getting used to it but I'm trying to be cautious about what I say and do around them. After all, I now represent the fandom in a whole new way. I guess that this means I'm officially a long-term member of the fandom, with my lack of sleep being the ink used to sign the dotted line.