Question for y'all. Question for me.

[resonant]

Tonight the kidlet, who is twelve, asked me to define "fursona."

Um, yes. Dr. Spock did not prepare me for these moments.

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In other news: Are any of y'all involved in university public relations? The spouse is looking for some advice. (U.S. folks preferred, since higher education probably works differently in other countries.)

Comments

[myalexandria]

I had to look up "fursona," so I would have been no help in the moment. However, I think the "just tell it to them straight, and if they're not old enough for it, they'll shrug and move on" strategy is generally best. It's what my parents did with me and when I was little I really did just say "hmm" or "yuck" and then forget about it.

University PR: Not exactly, but I know a fair amount about PR and universities, so if you don't get a better offer, feel free to hit me up.

[sara]

*cackles*

My cousin's new wife asked today on FB if anyone could think of any consequences were one to sing Van Halen instead of lullabies to one's infant. I said yes, there are a few, mostly relating to how horrified other people will be about the things your child is familiar with.

And really, if she's 12...well, I'd found my folks' porn stash by the time I was 12. Also genre fiction. And I grew up JUST FINE. *snerk* One has to assume that the young people today are at least as well-informed as we ourselves were. I think it's very positive that she's coming to you with these questions, really.

[resonant]

Well, she didn't know it was porn-related, see! And I could tell that by the way she asked the question.

After I stopped laughing, I asked her what context she'd seen the word in, and it appears that in her group of friends it's used as pretty much synonymous with "avatar."

"OK," I said. "If you're going to be using that word, especially online, you should probably be aware that the most common usage is sexual."

"Huh. So you mean like explicit mating rituals?"

"Yeah, exactly," I said, and that was it.

[panisdead]

Hah! This is exactly the tactic I used at dinner tonight ("So, you're right, saying Princess Peach is 'hot' sort of does mean 'cute,' but it also implies that she's sexy or you want to date her. Just so you know."), so obviously I am in favor.

Explicit mating rituals!! Priceless.

[krait]

Is it really a primarily porn-related term? I thought it was common to all levels of furrydom, including the non-yiff/PG-rated crowd...

[resonant]

... huh. That'll teach me not to assume the world developed in the order in which I discovered it. I've mostly seen it in porn contexts, but my stomping grounds are obvs not the entire internet.

[krait]

I always thought it was essentially the furry term for 'alter ego', and applied to pretty much everyone, except perhaps those who are "just" RPing (one of many characters/the fur-ness of the character isn't something they identify with personally)?

In which case I can see why it ended up a synonym for "avatar", given furrydom's penchant for having icons/profile images of their particular character (or "self")...

[katherine]

essentially the furry term for 'alter ego', and applied to pretty much everyone

Precisely.

(Well, everyone except those who don't like the term for whatever reason. Splitters!)

Also, we have a wiki, so article link: http://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Fursona

[krait]

Ah! Silly me -- I should have known there was a wiki! :D Good to know; I'm much more comfortable letting furries define terms than trying to figure out how accurate my memories are.

[sara]

Explicit mating rituals. Heh.

[flipbook]

Seriously, until I read this comment I was sure it was some Latinate medical term I am not well-educated enough to recognize.

[norah]

Hey, I figured it out from just the roots! *proud of self in bizarre way*

[resonant]

It's actually very clever, linguistically.

[lookfar.livejournal.com]

Okay, my 15 year old, who is working up an Alice-in-Wonderland Lolita fashion sort of look, made herself a pair of earrings that look like cookies, the very same ones that Alice found outside the garden door, marked "Eat me," in little dots. And I did feel a need to rain on her parade by pointing out that there were other connotations there. She really felt that I had soiled something beautiful and pure. I don't know if I did right; should I have waited for one of her friends to tell her?

[giglet]

You might have soiled something beautiful and pure in her mind. But better that you do it than someone taking her earrings as an invitation.

(Then again, I just had another tough talk with my own teenager.)

[sara]

When I was that age, my grandfather gave me a beautiful leaf pendant. My mom also thought it was nice; my dad didn't bother to look.

At school, I got so busted because it was drug imagery. Because yeah. And none of us even knew! I got detention anyhow, and a reputation I didn't deserve. So I vote for bringing up these things before your kid goes out of the house and gets punished by some random institutional authority figure.

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

One time I was at a con, in which someone was wandering through the dealer's room wearing a bondage dress (which covered everything from neck to ankles) and a leash. A small child pointed and said, "Mommy, what are they doing?"

Mommy said, "They're playing make-believe."

Perfectly true, perfectly age-appropriate.

At 12, you can go into more detail if you want, but that's the basic.

[montanaharper]

Reminds me of the time Offspring v2.0 (then age 12 or so) asked me to explain seme and uke to him...because his older sister (age 19) refused to do so. I'm not sure if I'm happier that she referred him to me, or if I regard her as a dirty rotten coward for making me rescue her from the hole she'd dug for herself. ;-)

Most of the time when he came to me with those kinds of questions, my response would be, "It's about sex. You sure you want the explanation?" Sometimes he'd say yes, sometimes no. Now, though, he's 15 and has discovered the internet, so he doesn't ask me anymore. This only makes me a little nervous.

[kellyfaboo]

You know if I was a parent of a teen I'd be tempted to do something like make Scarleteen their homepage when the sex questions dried up.


Which is both evil and informative, but better than trying to get your sex-ed from porn.

[montanaharper]

I suspect that he's getting any sex-ed info he wants from a combination of WikiPedia and slowly working his way through TVTropes and related links. :-) Well, and occasionally I'll send him links for sites that I think might provide info he wouldn't get elsewhere (AVEN, for instance). Pretty sure I linked him to Scarleteen a while back, too.

[droolfangrrl]

"When a person likes to pretend to be an animal or humanoid animal, that's called a fursona."

[ecaterin]

rofl!!!!!

Maximum appropriate information is always the best policy with squidgets - what you don't know certainly *can* hurt you, when it comes to How Teh World Works.

[auctasinistra]

Y'know, there was a time when I wouldn't have even been able to guess at the meaning. Thanks to the internet, my guess (without looking it up) is "the persona of a furry when in costume."

If I'm right, does this make me wiser, or just weirder?