I've been thinking a lot about my influences lately, and seeing a few others on FA post similar lists, I decided to share this. Now I should say, this is NOT a Top 10 list - I'm terrible at ranking anything I like, and I'm not fond of it, so instead these are listed chronologically - that is, in the order that I discovered them leading up to my discovery of Furry. So moving on -

1 - Disney's Pinocchio. No surprise there, I'm sure. This may be the first movie I remember watching. I know this one scene stood out to me so much that when I was older I played it in slow motion until I wore out the lettering on the VCR. I think what made it stand out is Lampwick's total unawareness of what's happening to him. Adding a touch of nervous humor is sure to make anything stand out more, especially TF.

2 - Disney's The Sword in the Stone. Either this or Pinocchio may be the first movie I watched, I'm not sure, but they're contenders. But Sword definitely had a stronger influence on me, first, because the animators drew their animals to resemble the characters' human forms, which made it so much more enjoyable. Second, because in this movie transforming into an animal was FUN. That hooked my imagination in a big way.

3 - The Thief of Baghdad (1940). To those who haven't seen this movie, it's a truly spectacular fantasy by '40s standards, up there with Wizard of Oz. Disney's Aladdin borrowed pretty heavily from it. At one point in the story the evil sorcerer, played by the great Conrad Veidt, transforms Sabu's character into a dog - "Son of a dog/ by this, my magic rune/ Be what your fathers bear/ then bay the moon" - isn't that an awesome incantation? It was just a simple fade TF, but it gave me a thrill at that age, especially since they even found a dog who LOOKED something like Sabu's human form. What made it more intriguing (SPOILER), Sabu's character spends a good chunk of time as a dog before changing back. Also, he changes back while shaking dry after a swim in the ocean, indicating that he'd sort of gotten used to canine form. Again, it got me thinking.

4 - Various Native-American Legends. I'm glad to say in my schools there was a strong push for diversity in storytelling, so we were read a lot of fine books from different cultures as well as western fairy tales. In this way I discovered a few stories from different Native-American cultures that featured TF, a few of the best are pictured here. These stories stood out for me - unlike in western fairy tales, where transformation is a punishment, or a curse to be undone, the hero frequently CHOOSES to transform, and often remains an animal voluntarily. These stories also usually featured a romance between the hero and the shapeshifter, and transforming together almost seemed like a marriage. That appealed to me as well, because I was always a romantic, even at that age.

5 - Nick Bottom. Yes, I was exposed to Shakespeare at a very young age. I must have been about seven or eight when I first saw Midsummer Night's Dream at an outdoor theater in Massachusetts. I didn't understand all the language, but I LOVED the sound of it. And how could I not love Bottom, the good-natured doofus who finds himself turned into a donkey-headed man? As with Lampwick I loved his total obliviousness to the change. If anyone wants to talk movies, I recommend the 1935 version with Jimmy Cagney as Bottom - it has the best onscreen TF, and Cagney is amazingly good.

6 - The Magic Schoolbus, TV series. Very few kids' series fully live up to the claim of 'making learning fun.' This was one of them, partly because of the great Lily Tomlin as Ms. Frizzle, a zany, off-kilter Mary Poppins. Only one of the books included transformation, and it barely counted as such, since it just featured the kids in bee-suits. But the cartoon featured full-on animal TFs in several episodes, sometimes with human heads on animal bodies, sometimes full feral, like the episode pictured here. And again, transforming was presented as FUN, which made a huge difference. Sometimes the TFs went to some fairly strange places regarding animal behavior and biology that surprises me. I imagine that's why none of those episodes are on Netflix, sad to say.

7 - Circe. Around age 9-10 I started becoming a serious mythology buff, and of course I discovered Circe. How could the idea of an entire island of animals once human not intrigue me? Also every animal was a reflection of the victim's human personality, which stoked the imagination even more. I recommend Nathaniel Hawthorne's retelling of the Odyssey episode as the most fun. I watched the Hallmark Odyssey just for Circe, and Bernadette Peters was, I think, perfect in the role. I love her disappointment when Odysseus doesn't transform - "I was hoping for a lion from such a man."

8 - Roald Dahl's The Witches. I'm sure a lot of Furs refer to the 1990 movie as a catalyst, but for me the book came first. It blew my mind when I read it, not because of the mouse transformation itself, but because (SPOILER) by the end, not only is the hero still a mouse, he decides he prefers it that way. No hero in any fairy tale I'd ever read had made THAT decision. And I was closer to realizing my interest in TF ran slightly deeper than usual. As for the Robert Zemeckis film version, we do NOT speak of that.

9 - Ladyhawke. This '80s fantasy flick pricked my love of TF when I discovered it around 10 or 11. If you haven't seen it, Michelle Pfeiffer and Rutger Hauer play two cursed lovers - during the day she turns into a hawk, and he becomes a wolf every night, so they're always separated by species barrier. It was a story that appealed to my romantic nature, the fact that they are still sticking together as much as possible (and also because I strongly identify with Matthew Broderick's character). At one point Hauer wistfully remarks 'Do you know hawks and wolves both mate for life?' hinting that being an animal itself isn't so bad, if only they didn't have to be separated.

10 - Brother Bear. This was it. This was the movie that let me know I was more than a TF lover, I was a Furry. When this movie came out I'd discovered the Fandom, but was still unsure how much to embrace it. This movie felt like a sign saying 'go for it,' largely because it didn't end like I expected it to, as a Beauty & the Beast clone. It ended like some of the furry stories I'd already read. The fact that it was coming from a mainstream animated movie convinced me I wasn't mentally ill. There are other influences of course, but these ten are most definitely the strongest.