I've had my own fursuit for about a year. And in that year, I fursuited a bit. During this period, I have encountered a few people who didn't really properly interact with me, which kind of still haunts me to this day. So let me write about some of my experiences, so you know how to interact with fursuiters properly. I'm going to write them in the order of meh to WTF - so they are not in chronological order.

Cutting off the path to take pictures

I've written about that already in this blog post, though since that post is in German, I'll talk about it here again, in English.

I was at the Gamescom, and didn't drink a lot. My water bottle was empty, so I wanted to refill it at the refill station. As I wanted to go there with my spotters, a group of people (around 3 to 4 people?) cut off my way and demanded to take pictures with me. Didn't really ask me, just said: "Oh, we need to take a picture!!" Their personality was also more of an "OMG haha a furry xDDDDD", which didn't go well at all with a tired Steffo who just wanted to drink something...

Stealing my horns

I don't know if you know this, but my fursuit has magnetic horns and ears. Something that was super visible in my fursuit unboxing live stream (and video). And someone, who watched that video (or stream), was also at my first ever fursuit walk with my own fursuit - something special.

What happened? Right before we wanted to start walking, that person removed my horns from my head, and ran away with them - wanting me to run after.

Okay, I didn't react in the nicest way, but that act reminded me of the time when I got bullied at school, so I just... showed that person the middle finger and walked (at normal speed) towards the car of my friend who drove me to that fursuit walk. I'm definitely not proud of what I did there, but I acted purely out of emotion. (Also... dude, you can't just steal someone's horns without making sure it's fine first!)

Grabbing fursuiters without consent

At one of the latter fursuit walks, I had a not-nice interaction with some older (elderly?) people. While standing in front of the Kaiser Wilhelm monument, after taking some group pictures, a man came up to us and wanted to take a photo with us. Okay, we can do that, sure.

First, he asked if he should go onto the bench (we stood on the stone bench), or stay in front of us. I said "please in front of us", and he just said "ahh, of course onto the bench!". Then, he grabbed me by the stomach - with force. I told him four or five times that I didn't want this, but he didn't stop or respond. Only after I removed his hand with my paws did he stop.

Though, that day was weird anyway. The person who had guided us through the city was in a fox fursuit and as we walked along the tables of a restaurant, some people supposedly touched her...

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THOSE PEOPLE?!

So... how should you interact with fursuiters?

I won't go into detail in this blog post here, but I've seen an awesome video that talks about this. Go watch it!