There's no black or white
No change in the light
No night, no golden sun
The sound of cars
The smell of bars
The awful feeling of electric heat
Under fluorescent lights, there's sacrifice
There's hard feelings
There's pointless waste
I want wind to blow:
My clothes off me
Sweep me off my feet
Take me up, don't bring me back
Oh, where I can see days pass by me
I have no head to hold in grief
– I Want Wind to Blow
IF Flynn’s route is theory, Leo’s is practice. While I can rabble-rouse and rant purple of the innate furry condition, there is an unestablishable baseline that one must experience to understand. This experience is accumulated through consumption of members of a given medium, as aspects of each accumulate together to form an unperceivable, yet felt, whole. This is why, even if you don’t try to notice them, tropes will always point out to you – consciously or not. What, then, would be the best way to understand the furry condition, and fantasy as is relevant to it?
To this end, may I suggest Leo’s route. Leo’s route is, by far, the most popular of Echo, which, in itself, is one of the most popular furry visual novels ever published. It is only logical then that Leo himself is the most popular character of Echo, yet it is paradoxically logical and illogical as to why Leo has been received the way he has. I say this due to the fact that Echo predicts how people will receive Leo, yet the way he is received is nonsense nonetheless. To illustrate what I mean, I must paint the broader strokes of what Leo’s route actually entails, versus what many think it does.
If two words could describe Leo’s route, it would be bittersweet denial. While Flynn’s is the rejection of the real and descent into fantasy, Leo’s route is, ideally, rejection of fantasy and descent into the real. Flynn’s route is a downward concentric-spiral, while Leo’s route is a sharp-breakway. Leo is presented with many of the same conditions of Flynn, with that same universal fear; death by mediocrity, or, a fantasyless life. While Leo’s conditions aren’t as stark as Flynn’s, it can be said that what Leo and Flynn want are extraordinarily similar in aim. Both Flynn and Leo maim the past into self-fulfilling caricatures; Both Flynn and Leo have intense future aims and fantasies; and both Flynn and Leo feel run aground in Echo.
The point of divergence, besides the endings, is the specific aspect of fantasy each addresses. Flynn’s is a fantasy of vengeance, of deservingness, of belonging. Flynn fetishizes what could’ve been – no, what should’ve been – to a blinding flashpoint. Leo’s fantasy, on the other hand, is of romance; of the soft withering away on mahogany porch chairs into that good night. Leo will kill to preserve his vision of the future; and Flynn will die to preserve his vision of the past. Leo and Chase's relationship is that of a couple who wishes to appreciate the world, enjoy the wonders, and explore those far-flung crevices seemingly made to be inhabited – a sort of wanderlust ever only formed by teenage yearning in burning towns. Flynn and Sydney’s relationship, though, is a far different beast; Flynn and Sydney’s relationship is that of spite. It is of the survivor mentality; of solace found in each other, not the world; for who they are and who they stand against, akin to that of brothers-in-arms. It’s a matter of the future can improve versus we can improve.
I labor over this in order to emphasize the exact difference and how this may make the reception to Flynn and Leo differ. For all of the positive reception of Leo’s route, hardly ever have I heard a fan of Flynn’s. In fact, I have heard often more of people complaining about Flynn narratively than I have of genuine appraisal or appreciation. “Why does he have to be such an ass anyways,” a question which it and its variations you will hear often – explicitly or implied – in Echo discussion. This question could only ever arise from one perspective and one way of engagement that the furry visual novel harbors so often; projection.
One of the prevalent metacommentaries in Echo is denial. Whereas other furry visual novels often pamper their players – going out of their way to change character motives, identities, and world events on a whim to match their desires – Echo is seemingly the opposite. Echo has many sex scenes, yes, but hardly any of them go uninterrupted. In all of Echo’s routes, only a select few actually end in a healthy romance (in fact, you’re more often to kill or traumatize the person whose route you chose than you are to end up romancing them). In this way Echo does something that many visual novels fail to do; it treats its characters as actual people. In way, way too many visual novels characters are less actual people than they are talking canvases fitted with sheets of human skin. Why do you think visual novels provide so many ways to undo decisions, through either save-states or rewinding through dialogue trees? Why do you think they provide warnings and offer so many choices to make? Why do you think they have such agreeable characters? Such fast romances? Such malleability? It is because of one simple truth: that Godhood is implied .
To disrupt such a fantasy then would be more akin to heresy and treason than artistic intent. Anytime a low occurs in a narrative, a rebound must follow. It’s as if the plot to many visual novels is the stock market; a broadly increasing imaginary line that pretends to have divots and spikes in the short-term. Even when tragedy does occur, it does so in such a bittersweet way as to impart a nearly aesopic-level message to the reader. Are videogames, in general, perhaps guilty of this? Yes – look around and you will find many googling ideal Skyrim outcomes, or rewinding Disco Elysium skill checks. Yet the insinuation in visual novels – particularly furry visual novels – is darker and insidious (a fact that Echo utilizes to fuel its horror) in an indescribable way. Why?
Before I attempt to explain why, I find it necessary to describe the reception of Leo in detail (at least, from what I have seen – I am by no means a veteran, but I am an observer). If I had to describe the series of emotions I felt when reading about Leo online it would be this – Hilarity, then confusion, then a disappointed depression. The entire theme of Leo’s route – the letting go of unworkable relationships, the moving on to new horizons – seems not to have fallen on deaf ears, but seems to have been intentionally betrayed entirely. People, online, earnestly complaining about the romancibility of Leo in his route. People, online, praising Leo and his characteristics. People, online, earnestly hoping for a Leo in their life, regardless of the fact that Leo is more than willing to kill for his perverted fantasy. Now, I don’t want to be a hardass – I do obviously recognize that irony and humor exists. Yet so many of these examples are read in such a straightforwardly sincere way, persona-bound that to say it was ironic or a joke would be to pray out of pity for the other person.
I wouldn’t say there’s anything nefarious or evil about people writing fanfiction and drawing art of alternative universes. What I specifically find nefarious is the rejection of the original artistic vision for this explicit fetishistic purpose. Bring up the undesirable truths of Leo’s route and what will you be met with? At best, crickets – maybe a sardonic comment or two – at worst, a disheartening defense. This realization, I think, startled me. It’s not a particularly hard thing to realize, but it makes you second guess it all and wonder again how ridiculous this all is. What initially made the rejection of Leo’s route disturbing was the irony in it. Over time, though, this made me think – what about every other visual novel? Even those where it wouldn’t be so laughably contradictory to manipulate as you see fit? When you read a book, hardly ever do you go back and think – “Well, no, actually,” and jail the protagonist in your mind’s eye, forever your romantic plaything. Neither would you a movie, nor a show. So what is it about furry visual novels that turns them more into palettes of art with vague notions and ideas, consumable as seen fit?
Fantasy, as mentioned before, is how. Yet, you may point out, fantasy exists all too common in other fandoms too. Take, say, Star Trek, or DnD, or anything of similar likeliness. Are they, according to this, not also equally as prone to fantasy? You may also point out that many normal people fantasize about never-existent things, like how those in the 80’s held onto MJ like a darling. Is this visual novel phenomenon, then, not unique to furries? To try and answer these questions, I would like to explore how the furry fandom is less of a hobbyist culture as much as it is forming to be a distinct cultural identity, entangling the lives of its members.
Furries are somewhat infamous for their promiscuity. As much as it may be denied by individual members, the fandom is extraordinarily sexual. At the same time, however, is a desperate yet hypocritical insistence on safe-for-work innocence and normality. This dialectical combination results in the unique furry subculture. While some communities are majorly innocent – say, for example, DnD, Star Trek – and others are entirely sexual – say, for example, isolated extremities in those same communities, or other fetish subcultures – the furry fandom is both and neither. Across the same aisle from innocent fursuit photography and public menagerie you will find bad dragon. This, I believe, results in what I want to call the enigmatic bar.
The bar is what I can describe as the “tonality” of a given person in the furry fandom. While other fandoms, like, say, Warhammer, have fans surely more dedicated than others, this dedication does not ride on a matter of morality and identity. You do not question your own being when you spend $500 versus $5000, and your unwavering support is only a matter of being a bootlicker. Sure, you may question your own finances, but that is hardly existential. This is not the case with the furry fandom. In the furry fandom, the bar is the degree to which one excuses their own weirdness, and, avoiding hypocrisy, others. The bar is first established when anyone joins the fandom, as, to put it bluntly, we are weird. This is an undeniable fact; even the most milquetoast of our members – 30-something hetero engineers and mechanics – would be looked upon with strange glances if they were to reveal their participation in the furry fandom. The bar varies from person to person (this is due to the fact that everyone has a different idea of what the furry fandom will be going into it), and those with similar tones congregate into sub-subcultures. The kicker, of course, is the intersubjectivity of this bar, and the sheer variance.
A rather infamous image that makes the rounds is the “FURRY DRAMA CYCLE” one, which is used either for humor or a false sense of self-surperiority. I believe the aforementioned bar is the culprit. The bar is so intersubjective, that the moral tastes of each member of the fandom can be as little as one or two degrees of separation from the truly taboo. I say taste, because hardly is there an actual argument made in these conversations, but rather endless matters of preference. To take, for example, a recent conversation – Babyfurs. You have those saying, under the guise of the slippery-slope fallacy, that these sorts of things are pathways into taboo habits, ignoring the fact that this exact argument has been the one made against the furry fandom broadly since its inception. On the other hand, you have a laissez-faire moral denigration, where we are supposed to allow people to simply enjoy things – ignoring any implication invited – because of these external forces we always seem to try and appeal to, as if every interfandom condemnation is an invitation of the devil to the door. Notably not a refutation of the claims, but simply a passover of any moral wrongdoing. And so we go, round and round on the moral merryground, where members take turns staking their own mounds of mild disagreement. All this bickering leads me to ask; why are we furries?
To put it short, I believe we are because we want to be. The furry fandom is such a unique subculture, so broad in its strokes, so all-encompassing that anyone from the discarded pile of this social world can find their own plot. It’s a fusion of sexuality and identity – e.g., the LGBTQIA+ community – with mundanity and fandom – e.g., DnD, Star Trek – in a way that has rarely ever been seen. As a result, we are seeing these rare consequences and behaviors, as the furry fandom beckons forth like Ellis Island. The busy and the sexless; The romantics and the romanceless; The taboo and the vanilla; the young and old; the rich and the poor; the disabled and the fit; the well and the ill; all have a roof under this umbrella of fantasy. That together, all of these vague differences may wash away under the silver ethernet tides of the internet and the wispy dreamlike apparitions of our fantasies, congealed together into being weird people, oxymoronically, together. That together, the ill, no matter how much so, may extend the day. Is it truly that strange, then, that these people claw hopefully for worlds that don’t exist – Worlds explicitly defined against existence by their creator, such as Leo’s. Is it truly dark and nefarious, then, for people to cry and drive for a better world – One made for them? Isn’t it fitting, then, that the symbol of the furry fandom be the fursuit – Where under the mounds of synthetic fur, the person vanishes, and something else rises? Is this not why the weird come crawling here, to escape what they found before, either unfulfilled or unwanting – To find Zion in a dataserver, or at the side of a convention stall? Is this why we are these animals – because, just sometimes, we want to be more than we are?
