It’s a pretty open secret at this point that many, but not all furries love inflation. Not with the economy (overused joke), but rather, body inflation. Seeing myself blown up like a balloon has become an oddly pleasant satisfaction, and something I can take a bit of comfort within both ways.
That said, there’s also a set of schticks that an even smaller number of furs are into. It’s a hard group to explain so I’ll provide a handful of examples from pop culture in an easy to web search format to give you an idea:
- The reveal of Judge Doom from Roger Rabbit
- The 2004 Pinball video game “Mario Pinball Land”
- The various shapes of Tom from Tom and Jerry
Simply put, there’s a group of furries (among others) that enjoy various cartoon tropes along these lines with their own characters. Being flattened, stretched, and squished into various shapes and sizes. It’s kind of hard to put it explicitly under the category of Transformation because of how narrow it is, and the process doesn’t always tend to be the focus of it, so I’ll just simply refer to it as Toon (of course, one’s interests can always overlap. And there is a lot here, especially with inflation being a common cartoon gag as well).
In fact, at one point between 2016 – 2022, there was a group known as The Squish Gang (Archived Link), lead by Arcaxon the Arcanine-Corgi (A toon and transformation enthusiast), that served somewhat as a de facto hub for these kinds of enthusiasts. While the group wasn’t explicitly limited to furries, of the close to 1,000 members in its Discord server before its closure, it was run and occupied by them. And frequently engaged with users in production with raffles, and other cool projects made by its users and operators. And with plenty of cartoons being occupied by anthropomorphic animals, there was plenty of content to enjoy for all.
While it might be easy to dismiss the concept of toon as just another weird furry kink (for starters, it’s not explicitly limited to furries or furry characters), it’s also an overlapping group of users who also just enjoy cartoons in general, especially those from the golden age of cartoons. But that being said, it is still a kink to many (though not all), and Rule 34 still very much applies here, so you will find explicit content as well. But there’s a pretty healthy mix that makes it hard to call it a kink alone.
Some artists in the community I like are:
- Will Mofield, a Gray Wolf with pants from the UK.
- Wringed, as Taylor the Lemur.
- Malletspace, as Malus the Hyena. With a striking blend that looks like a mix of Western Animation and Anime.
- EccentricChimera, an Eastern Dragon in a top hat.
- Matt Valkyrie the Lion, who draws balled up, buff looking critters.
- UnknownBoy the Incineroar-Tiger, who I just recently got a commission from at the time of writing.
There are many more out there all around the world, and there are plenty of other folks as well that I like and follow closely as well.
Where I sit in the group
I, as I mentioned before, am a toon enthusiast as well. While I wish my OC was much more of a Toon character, similar to many of those that I follow. I’m also not sure what I could change either about it. And I don’t really know if I would either since other interests make my mark on my wolfself as well, a bit of a fantasy buff (I was inspired to name myself “Soulfire” because I was initially making a D&D character and thought the name sounded very Warriors inspired, despite never having read the books, only seeing a bit of playground roleplay when I was younger), there isn’t that much about the fire, it’s just cool. I just don’t think anyone has ever seen a fiery toon wolf before. And I’m not sure how I would execute that.
Of course, it also doesn’t really matter either. It’s who I am, so I can do what I want.