The Encyclopedia Of Smut: Y Is For Yiff

Yiff, which has many meanings in the erotic realm of the furry lifestyle, has been hyped and overexposed by critics, comics, and all others who raise a curious eyebrow towards the furries, but it's really one small facet of furrydom. That being said, we know very little about that facet, and we desperately want to know more. Check your attitude and your judgment at the door because this article is all about yiffing.

Just so we're all clear, furries are people who identify with and may wish to assume the characteristics of non-human animals (usually anthropomorphized animals who walk on two feet and display human facial expressions). Not every furry owns a big fur costume, and not every furry expresses their sexuality through the furry fandom. Got it? Good.

Introduction to Foxish

According to WikiFur, yiff was originally a term coined by someone named Foxen as he was roleplaying in a text-based multiplayer online game called FurryMUCK. One of his characters, littlefox, was known for communicating through strange sounds, and these eventually became part of a widely used language called Foxish. Yiff was Foxen's greeting, but it, along with terms like yerf and yip, can signify happiness and/or agreement. No one can say exactly how yiff adopted sexual connotations, but it's suggested that "feeling yiffy" changed from feeling happy to feeling horny, and thus yiff became synonymous for all sexual aspects of furry fandom.

If you're wondering why "yiff" is the word and not something else, well, that's also highly debated. Some people say that foxes make a yiff-esque sound when they're mating, others say that it's the sound of two fur suits rubbing against each other, and many say it just happened to be a cute, cheerful term that caught on quickly.

[Above: an illustration on proper condom usage taken from The Yiffy Guide to Safer Sex]

Down the Rabbit (or Fox) Hole

What does furry porn look like? Well, you have the pictures on this page to answer that partially, but we don't want you to think these illustrations are the end-all and be-all of furotica. You can view the myth of Zeus transforming Leda into a swan as ancient furry porn, and even some of Bugs Bunny's racier moments (dressing up in women's clothing, striking classic pin-up poses, etc.) qualify as vintage furotica.

A sensational article published in Vanity Fair--one often criticized by furries--suggested that the majority of furry porn is homosexual in nature, but there is no data to support that (and the same article also says that the majority of furry fans were homosexual males with beards and glasses, so take it with many, many grains of salt). Furry porn is as diverse as the sexualities of the people who enjoy it, and since there are no real-life humans involved, many intense, violent, and/or illegal sexual acts can be explored. Here are a few uniquely interesting parts yiff scene:

· Transformation - Humans becoming animals, animals becoming other animals, different species turning into each other via sex, etc. Note that this is a common trope of non-sexual furry fandom as well.
· Vorarephilia (often shortened to vore) - This paraphilia is all about gaining sexual arousal through the idea of eating or being eaten by another, and although it's not exclusively a furry thing, it's not a far stretch for furry porn to depict predatory furries (based on wolves, lions, and other carnivorous animals) feasting on furry prey. You can divide vorarephilia into soft vore--animals being swallowed alive and dying in the stomach--and hard vore--animals being ripped to shreds with much chewing and gore.
· Parody - Pop culture is full of anthropomorphized creatures, and nearly every last cartoon pony and talking Disney animal has been redrawn in a yiff scene.

Also, we'd like to point out that a great deal of yiff seems to feature canine furries and horses. We expected to see more felines!

[Above: a drawing titled "Best Party Ever," via Furry Porn]

Where to Yiff?

As far as we can tell, there are no major professional studios that produce pornography aimed at furries, and so most furry erotica--whether text, illustration, animation, or video--is made by fans. However, there exists professionally made hentai that includes anthropomorphic creature characters, and this can fit under the umbrella of yiff smut as well.

While we don't consider ourselves authorities on internet furotica, here are a few sites that we've enjoyed browsing during our research.

Smut
· Furry Porn - A Tumblr with a wide range of illustrated yiffing. The moderators even take requests, so if you want to see a fox and a dragon get it on, you totally can. See also: Fox and His Furries.
· fchan - A massive but well-organized forum when artists submit their work, critique each other, and possibly arouse each other. fchan contains the most cartoon parody yiff that we've seen online.
· Yiffy International - Contains a large stash of user-generated content, including stories, audio files, drawings, comics, and even some videos. However, most of the videos depict plushophilia, which is associated with yiff but still distinct.
· FurSuitSex.net - For those of you who came here to see people in fur suits having sex with each other, we kindly direct you towards FurSuitSex.net. It's a paysite, but there is enough free material available to get your fuzzy motor running.

Information
· WikiFur - It's Wikipedia for furries! The articles here are well-written, informative, and deeply fascinating. It gives you a good idea of how huge and developed furry fandom truly is.
· The Yiffy Guide to Safer Sex (pdf) - How do furries have safe sex? Well, they take a look at this pamphlet (which, admittedly, has some outdated information) and then go about their business.
· Furries From A to Z (Anthropomorphism to Zoomorphism) (pdf) - This article, published in "Society & Animals," reports the findings of a massive survey conducted at the largest furry convention in the world, and much of it debunks the harsh accusations leveled by that Vanity Fair article that no one online seems to keep a record of.

[Above: there's that dragon and fox you asked for, via Furry Porn]

[At top: picture via Fox and His Furries (foxandhisfurries.tumblr.com)]