This Needs to Stop

Instructions

I. HATE. BULLIES. Hope you're ready for a really long story because I've got one. :) Let's start from the beginning. When I was in elementary school, I often played games where I pretended to be an animal. Dragons, wolves, cats, etc. It was one of my favorite games to play, and my friends liked to play it too. In fifth (or maybe it was sixth) grade, me and a bunch of other people (I think there was like 10-15 of us total) started this game where we were all a wolf pack. It was so fun, and one of the biggest things I remember from elementary school. Then came 7th grade. Obviously no recess, so I didn't play animal games as much. Sometimes I would with my family or friends, but not as much. Now currently, I haven't played an animal game in at least a year, I think. Unless you count roleplaying on Scratch. I'm talking about LARPing. I don't remember the last time I did that. Anyway, around the end of 7th grade I decided to make myself a scratch OC. It's an animal. Pretty normal for Scratch. Anyway, Scratch isn't the point. The point is at the beginning of 8th grade, my brothers started bugging me, saying I was a furry because I enjoyed playing animal games or something I don't really remember the exact reasons. Then my friend made me a PFP of my OC to use on Scratch. It was amazing! I showed my mom because I was super happy and proud of my friend. My brother saw, and he's not that mean, but he said something about me being a furry. Naturally, I got a little upset because I'm not a furry. I told my friend and she was really kind and defended me, saying that someone is only a furry if they choose to identify as one. Now I have a friend going through that but even worse, but I can't really defend her at all because she goes to a different school. I just got a text from one of my friends who goes to the same school as her that she has been getting bullied for playing animal games at recess. Obviously, this makes me mad because I used to play animal games at recess and it was super fun. My friend said that the bullies took something of hers and put it in the mud. That's technically illegal. Destruction of personal property. Yes, you can wash it, but it could easily be stained forever. She said one kid has a really rough home life, and being bullied at school isn't helping. I'm not saying furries are bad. If you are a furry, great. If you aren't, great. Personally, I don't really care about those kinds of things. What I do care about is people using it as an insult and people getting bullied about it when it's not even true. Basically, this just comes down to 2 main points. 1. Stop furry hating. It has nothing to do with you. 2. Stop bullying people for roleplaying as animals. You know what, just stop bullying AT ALL. You NEVER know the effects bullying has one people. For all you know, they could be struggling with self-hate because of you. You just NEVER KNOW. Even if it's a sibling. There's no way to tell, because they probably wouldn't open up about something like that. Especially not to the person causing it. Please just don't bully, and speak up if you see someone get bullied.