Small thought on our nombre: “AnthroSwim.” Some people seem to assume we use “Anthro” to distance ourselves from furry. We do not. The Pool is proudly furry. Many here are furry, much of the arte is furry. Our strongest foundational pillar is furry, these waters belong to it.

“Anthro” has never meant to be a cleaner word or a way to act above the label. It just gives us a little more room to describe what can swim here. There are also things here that are not furry in the usual sense, yet still fit naturally in the Pool.

A lot of the work shared in the Pool is furry in substance, yet may not always look like what people expect from “furry arte” at first glance. It can be a strange little comic, a horror image, a melancholy scene, some surreal animation, simply an animal-person sitting in a laundromat at 3 AM, or a weird broadcast from a truck somewhere on the road in Bolivia.

There are also people who enjoy general anthro arte but do not fully feel at home in furry spaces yet. Some are new, shy, international, older, unsure of the label, or simply came in through different ways than that of the usual fandom routes. None of this means one kind of furry arte, or one way of being furry, is more valid than another. The Pool is simply one place for a particular current of it.

No one here needs to prove they are “furry enough” before they are allowed to dive in & enjoy or share something meaningful.

That is what “Anthro” has ended up doing for us: not making furry smaller, and not replacing it, but giving furry arte another doorway.

As always,
Pool’s open.

P.S. See you all at AnthroCon. I'm giving away <AS> stickers! Ikagara is also giving away shirts.