And an idiot child shall lead them.

"Ich nehm dich fester in den Arm
Dass ich dich besser führen kann
[...]
Purpurrot auf bleichen Wangen
Kleidet dich ganz wunderbar"

Eisbrecher - Tanz mit mir


Y'know, I was preparing a post about squad management games tonight, but I unwisely checked if the webcomic Weregeek might be trying to pull out of its snowflake tailspin, so we're gonna talk about that instead. (Short answer: no, it's not.)

Apparently we've moved on from crowd-sourcing our sexual orientations to... I guess it's a renaissance fair? Yeah. Ok, so we're at a RenFaire and one of the characters puts on some idiotic rainbow-colored tapir head, pink tutu and paw mittens from a furry costume. Other attendees in tunics and shawls voice disapproval at this and are painted as intolerant snobs, but a little kid runs up to the furry, calls her cute and hugs her, to which she exclaims at her audience: "That's why I wear this, haters!"
We may need to unpack this:

1) I don't go to RenFaires. For one thing, any activity requiring costumes doesn't seem worth it (and I am very much including weddings) but let's call that personal taste. Also, unlike most of the target demographic, I've actually gotten a taste of traditional village life and while it certainly boasts some charms, medievalist nostalgia is overall woefully misplaced. Try actually harvesting a grassy hillside with a scythe and then count your blisters... and your toes. Still, the point of the activity does seem to be creating a particular atmosphere. That not all participants will go whole-hog on the clogs is not the issue. We're not talking about people wearing sunglasses, or anachronistic porta-potties being provided for comfort and hygiene. A furry would be putting a great deal of deliberate and active effort into crashing the re-enactment party for no apparent reason than egomania.

2) If you want to put on an eye-poppingly colorful animal costume and get hugged by children, you don't need to be at a RenFaire to do that. There are actual furry conventions you could be attending. Or get a job juggling and making balloon animals at children's birthday parties: get paid for doing what you love! In other words, you already have your own thing going, but you'd like everyone else's thing to be your thing also. It's no more justifiable than Civil War re-enactors running their drills in the middle of a furry convention. You're not being oppressed by being discouraged from that. You're just an asshole being called out on your abuse of others and invasion of their space.

3) Most galling, the opinions of informed, adult attendees are supposed to be completely invalidated by the approval of a five-year-old. The ultimate arbiter of intellectual and moral taste is supposed to be someone with no clue whatsoever as to the Renaissance or a Fair, and who would be equally impressed by lighting farts, pulling a cat's tail or stomping around in a puddle. May we all be vindicated by praise from the mentally incompetent.

4) Irony of ironies, Weregeek's comment section itself warns me, when trying to paste a paragraph of this post into it, that I have a 90% likelihood of being considered "toxic" despite containing no slurs or motherfucking swearing whatsoever... in other words the author herself finds it necessary to police her own audience's participation!

Hater.