#but b/c I post both sparklefur/scenedog stuff and weirdfur; sometimes in the same post; I worry that since weirdfur is so small and niche

[thornshadowwolf]

I'm generally on the same page as you; just wanted to clarify - by "incomparable to existing species" I don't mean "original species" (necessarily; some might still be included if they are strange enough). I mean genuinely difficult to compare / equivalate. If I can easily explain what the character (or species) looks like using existing creatures then that wouldn't really count as this category (ex. if I can say "looks like a really long cat with six legs" it wouldn't count). I wouldn't put sergals under this category because they're very much Any Other (anthropomorphized) Animal (and if you want to literally compare them, they're oft described as shark-like). It's meant to be a step up on the scale from "strange anatomy." Really pushing what can be described as an animal (/ furry).

Tho admittedly this scale is far from perfect. I struggled with categorizing things beyond what my own interpretation of the term is. Like, with the aforementioned category, there are many real life animals that are incredibly unique, so is there really anything that can't be described by comparing it to animals? As another example, there should probably be a step between "common add-ons" and "strange anatomy" I just couldn't figure out how to define / word it. (And of course in practice the "steps" aren't quite so neatly separate.) Point is I tried not to favor my own answer too much by cutting off the options at what I thought was obvious or logical, and as a result had to come up with things that I Didn't Really Get and therefore struggled to define and exemplify.

Thanks for the thorough answer/thoughts though!

Ok because I keep thinking people are grossly misusing the term but maybe I'm in the minority -

(If people are interested I might make more nuanced/in depth polls, since there are many things that don't exactly fit on a straight "less weird to more weird" scale of this type, such as "object heads" "character has piercings and body mods" "hybrids" "art style makes an otherwise normal character weirdfur" "cyborgs" "uncommon species" "furrifying inanimate objects")

(Also, there seems to be two overlapping but generally distinct weirdfur communities, one that's about weird furries in terms of strange and unusual anthro characters and designs, and one that's about weird furries in terms of furries (i.e. the people in the fandom) who are into kink. Respect to the latter but this poll is about the former.)