The Furry Impulse

by Simo

It would break, perhaps, the long loneliness that has made man a frequent terror and abomination even to himself

-- Loren Eiseley

Way back in the early 1960s, almost three decades before the first furcon, the philosopher-scientist Loren Eiseley wrote these words in his essay, The Long Loneliness:

"There is nothing more alone in the universe than man. He is alone because he has the intellectual capacity to know that he is separated by a vast gulf of social memory and experiment from the lives of his animal associates."

It is indeed unfortunate that Eiseley died in 1977, and did not get the chance to be the GoH of a furcon. He would have understood. The point of his essay is that man has been screwed over by nature in that there are no other intelligences with whom to interact. There have been a great variety of cultures that exist, and which have existed in the past. Regardless of what culture you're discussing, there have been a few universal dreams common to all: one is flight.

Regardless of how primitive or advanced, this dream of flight has been universal. It has been expressed in myth, legend, and artifacts. We have the Greek story of Daedalus and Icarus, the Indian stories of "vimana", rendered in exquisite technological detail, including the realization that different flying vehicles would require decidedly different configurations for different purposes. The pre-Colombian Inca were making gold figurines of "jet fighters".

Sometimes, this impulse worked itself out in various attempts to realize the dream. The Japanese built kites that could lift a man. Others, weren't so successful. Much treasure and many lives were sacrificed through history in the attempt to make it happen. Still, a kite or a balloon, isn't really all that satisfying since one still lacks the freedom of birds in flight. It is no coincidence that the Wright Brothers built the first successful airplane almost as soon as internal combustion technology advanced just far enough to make it possible. Of course, the power plant the Wrights used was piss-poor by modern standards: its weight was 180 pounds, it was a four-banger, and it developed all of 12 horsepower -- the same as the most modest lawn tractor. What the Wrights flew at Kitty Hawk would be an "ultralight", and every ultralight has four to five times the horsepower of the Wright's first airplane. Still, it was good enough, got the job done, and initiated a rapid advance in aviation technology.

In the same way, the mythology, folklore and literature of every culture is filled with stories of intelligent animals and humanimals. Some were worshipped as gods; others created for entertainment. Bugs Bunny, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Mickey Mouse, &c all have a very long lineage. You find stories like the Dr. Dolittle series. You have The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells, which includes a speculation on how what the fictional Dr. Moreau was doing might actually be accomplished, no less.

What about this totally age inappropriate fascination: Digimon? The franchise consists of a half dozen TV series and movies, plus comic books, and games -- all of which were intended for kids. This is something that, by all rights, should have been forgotten a long time ago (how many kid's cartoons can you name that debuted in 1999, let alone know what a "digital pet" is?). Yet you see Digimon this and Digimon that all over the 'Net. As of this writing, a Google search of "Digimon" returned 7,150,000 hits -- all on a kid's cartoon that went off the air years ago. What could account for that?

Believe me, it ain't got nuttin' to do with the quality of the stories, which leave a lot to be desired. It's not very original, seeming to have taken elements from an old movie: Tron. The idea that when a digimon "dies" it dissolves into disorganized bytes, or humans who enter the digital world as "data" and are therefore released from the usual laws of physics, all came from that movie. There's mega-villains, good guys, bad guys, lots of fighting with ray guns, senseless mayhem and destruction, etc, and shit happens, and so forth. It puts kids in positions of responsibility which just aren't credible (five or six year olds as digimon "partners" is absurd) but that sort of thing has undeniable kid-appeal.

A lot of the inconsistency and gaping holes in the story line was not the writers' fault. Impmon was originally intended to be no damn good from the get-go. Indeed, his purpose was to serve as an illustration of what can go wrong when digimon do not have human "tamers". The story line was already in place: Impmon would start off being merely annoying, then he would grow increasingly malevolent until he digivolved into a character embodying pure evil: Beelzemon (named after the Roman Catholic church's demon: Beelzebub -- the "Lord of the Flies"). This character was slated for extinction in an epic battle, and we were supposed to be glad to see him finally get exactly what he had coming to him, and 'bout damn time.

But then something unexpected happened: Impmon developed a following. The character you were supposed to love to hate became the character a good many viewers simply loved. (And did you notice how Impmon's appearance improved? From being drawn in the usual sloppy manner, the character gained anatomy: hips, elbows, knees, and ankles. They even paid attention to how he tied that red scarf around his neck, and made the size of his smiley badge consistent.) You can be sure that they were sweating bullets about that in the executive suites of Toei Animation. They had all this material good to go, and couldn't use it without totally pissing off a significant percentage of their customers. Kill off your most popular character and you might as well just cancel the whole damn series. Never depicting a favoured character in a sympathetic light will guarantee plummeting ratings. So that meant doing editing of the existing footage. There were allusions added that implied that there was a good deal more to Impmon than might be apparent at first. A back story (told through flash backs) was developed: Impmon did originally have tamers who abused him, took his affections for granted, and finally chased him away through their bad behavior. This served to explain his warped personality and gain our sympathy. The idea that digimon need "tamers" to keep them in line was quietly dropped, and the humans became "partners", not "tamers". Therefore, you could no longer assume that Impmon was "bad" just for being an unpartnered digimon.

To absolve Impmon of responsibility for Beelzemon, a new concept was gradually added: digimon don't recall their past incarnations in other alter-egos. Indeed, during that epic battle, Beelzemon doesn't even know who Impmon is. Therefore, Impmon can't be held responsible for what happened, doesn't recall anything about it, and learned about how Beelzemon.1.0 murdered Leomon in cold blood just like the rest: second hand. Even though Jeri, Leomon's partner, claimed that she would never forgive Beelzemon for what he did, she never held Impmon in any way responsible. It's Beelzemon.2.0 (the good guy who retains Impmon's green eyes) who needs to do all the atoning for all the wrong Beelzemon.1.0 did.

Still, there was enough just plain old piss-poor writing in evidence. One especially dumbassed episode is Digimon Tamers #43. Here we see Impmon standing on a corner, asking passers-by to read to him what's written on a board he's carrying. Finally, a friendly starnger (master of Takato's dojo?) asks him what he's yelling about, and Impmon asks him what's written on the board. It's a short message from his old partners, the ones who treated him so badly, telling that they've moved to "Smallville". The helpful stranger suggests he can take the subway, as it's not really all that far away. So Impmon is illiterate.

Oh for fuck's sake! He came from "Digiworld", where he had access to all the knowledge in the world. So between learning how to create and throw fireballs with precise accuracy, and summoning up "Infernal Funnels" (and thereby flagrantly violating the Law of Conservation of Energy on both counts) he somehow managed to over look "readin' 'n' 'ritin'"?! For all Impmon's faults, being a dipshit wasn't one of them. Also, the explanation that he's child-like doesn't fly either. Impmon is just one step away from his mega-form, making him, at the very least, comparable to an adolescent, if not a young adult. Basic literacy is something we should expect from this character. Also, given that he's likely to digivolve into a very powerful figure at any time, a certain level of adult maturity in evidence would be nice too. This whole scene was a clumsy, ham-handed set-up for this:

Impmon: "Hey, you looked at me and didn't freak out, what's up?"

FS: "In truth, the body is no more than a container, and I sense no wicked spirit in you (Two episodes ago, he was still Beelzemon. Looks like being Beelzemon did Impmon a whole world of good. I guess he finally got it out of his system?) so I knew you were peaceful (Since when?!)".

Impmon: "I'm not sure what you're talking about (Let me spell it out ferya: This is the producers' complete and unconditional capitulation to the Impmon fandom) but thanks anyway"

It would have been far better to have just ignored the whole problem from the get-go, let Beelzemon take his medicine, and deny that Impmon was ever Beelzemon in the first place. We never actually saw Impmon digivolve into Beelzemon. Piccies or it never happened. Then get him a different mega-form. Beelzemon sucked anyway. (All the other digimon had mega-forms that resembled themselves: Beezy-boy was a blond; Impmon was not. For Beezy, every day was a bad hair day, Impmon always seemed well groomed, with his fashion accessories always neatly in place. The Beezer tied a strip of red cloth around his arm, that's right: they shared a fashion accessory. Besides, with his pasty complexion and rail-thin form, Beelzemon looked like a crack-head or a meth addict (which would explain the red cloth around his arm: always ready to tie-off for a shot).) Since Impmon is a velociraptor/rabbit hybrid, you have a couple of possibilities right there for a bad-ass mega-form. Velociraptors are plenty bad-ass without further embellishments.

And did you notice this scene is out of order? What Impmon's doing here is asking for help in finding the house he broke into during the previous episode where he was waiting for Ai and Mako to come home.

That is shitty hack writing. Even if I was going to insult the intelligence of my audience by this ridiculous proclamation of the character's purity of spirit, despite his becoming this epitomy of evil that just kept getting worse right up until the end and by his own volition, I would simply have had him in front of the subway station pan handling for the fare. And even that would be questionable since he would have known he'd need that fare money anyway. There was an intelligent way to solve the problem, and they didn't do it. It was so fucking simple that I thought of it in about five minutes. About this time, I'd had my fill of dipshittery.

Digimon is all about humans who interact with non-human characters, most of which are anthropomorphic animals (Fur appeal! And let's not forget that in one episode Impmon actually said he was a furry.) How else could Digimon survive this long, and among a following well past the ages of those for whom this was intended originally, despite its many manifest weaknesses? By all rights, this should be just another popular culture trend, gone and forgotten by all except for collectors of old pop culture curiosities, like "Pogs" ferinstance. Whatever fan clubs that may have existed should have died out long ago for lack of interest, not be increasing in number and Internet presence. It would seem that it's become quite common for Digimon fans to be making music videos featuring their favorite characters these past couple of years. They're all over You Tube.

Fur appeal is the only thing keeping Digimon going. And the little purple velocirabbit has been supporting the whole franchise on his shoulders for ten years now. And did I mention, he's Furry.

The Furry Fandom is but one more attempt to bridge that "vast gulf". If there are no intelligent others, we can bring them to life through imagination: through art, fanfic, TV shows, movies, literature, and fursuiting. It isn't entirely original, as all of this has been done before. It isn't entirely satisfactory since it's not real. As for RL anthros, that is just a question of time. Right now, we're still in the "Daedalus and Icarus" phase -- dreaming of what might come to pass some day. However, we are a lot closer and getting closer every day. The advances made in the field of genetic engineering have been tremendous, and are advancing quite rapidly. Those intelligent animals, either by design, or accident, aren't all that far off.

Which brings us to Simo's First Rule of Science: "If a thing can be done, it will be done".