Image by Rusty

A Movable Feast

Call for submissions:

August 2026 Midway Menagerie

Welcome to August 2026 edition of Midway Menagerie, a blogging carnival loosely organized around ideas relevant to the furry fandom. Last month we considered what we mean when we talk about "the community." This month I'd like to ask where that community exists for you.

Where is furry?

Where are you when you feel the most comfortable as your furry self?

For many people this is a con, or a meet, or a bowling or dance night. Attendees commonly talk about "Post Con Depression" as the comedown from having experienced an extended fully-immersive furry event, and some furs build their lives around regular con attendance or even move into exclusively furry households. But for every con-fur there are community members have never been to an event and never intend to.

Many furries spend their social time in VR or other virtual worlds, or role-playing characters like Warrior Cats or trading their own stories or art on blogs or story archives. Some furries are creators who exclusively interact professionally as costume makers or illustrators. Some furs are highly technical, others barely use a computer. Some furries live in collective households with other furs, others don't dare display their collar or ears at home.

In his memoir of the same name, Ernest Hemingway described Paris in the 1920s, the most impactful time of his life, as a "movable feast." For him, Paris was a place and time so important that he carried it with him for the rest of his life. Maybe furry might be like that - not a place you visit but a place you carry with you, echos of which remind you of who you are. Perhaps this is something that isn't owned by any given platform, con or media franchise but something we collectively create wherever two or more are gathered? This would explain why furry seems to survives whenever its most visible incarnation shuts down: A hotel closes, a server dies, a platform shuts down and the feast moves on.

Or: I'm completely wrong and furry is the thing that you look forward to "doing" just one week a year, or only in the evenings and only in your VR headset. Or maybe it's something you are enjoying right now but don't intend to engage with once you "get serious."

• The place that isn't a place. Describe a furry "location" you love that has no physical existence — a VRChat world, a MUCK, a group chat, a shared document. What makes it a place and not just a service you log into?

• Migration. You've probably moved. Twitter to Bluesky, one Discord to the next, one platform to its replacement. Or physically: Kentucky to Boston, Boston to Iowa, California to Colorado, Amsterdam to Canada. Why did you move? What made the trip with you, and what got left behind? What did you discover you didn't actually need?

• When the room dies. Something you belonged to got shut down. Write the obituary. What was lost that can't be extracted from that platform or event? What turned out to have been somewhere else the whole time?

• Carried on the body. For many, a "fursona" is your self and travels with you into every room, physical or not. Is that where furry is located — not in any venue but in the self you bring. Does a 'sona need a community to mean anything at all? Is it what you wear?

• Marking territory Furry stickers on your car, on your baggage, on lamp-posts, signs, in venues across your city. Why do furries give each other stickers of their own faces? What do you do with them? What do they mean to you?

• Boundaries Are you a furry only inside your fursuit? Only at a con? When you're wearing your badge? Do you use a different name at home or work and with the community? How do you negotiate these boundaries? Does it ever get weird?

Ok I'm In!

Deadline: end of August 2026. Roundup goes up the first week of September.

The theme is a prompt to get you started, but feel free to take it anywhere you like. Also don't feel like you need to write a lot or even write at all! Submissions can be in any form that is possible to show online: a drawing, a song, a video, game, website, photograph, etc.

Send me your submission via this form, by email to menagerie@feralresearch.org, or by messaging me on any other platform (Telegram, Discord, etc.) where you have my contact info (please remind me that it's for the Aug Menagerie)

Still not sure how this whole carnival thing works? Want to join the Telegram channel? Check out the home page for the carnival.

Happy writing!