...retrofuturistic.
Postfurry's futuristic streak is about more than just giving your FurryMUCK character cyberimplants and plastic clothes. That might not be a bad start, but Puzzlebox is not just an ordinary sci-fi adventure MUCK. You won't find many space battles there, and you won't need a plasma cannon mounted in your forearm. Postfurry is more interested in the "soft" side of the future, in the way technology shapes people and their societies. It's about unpredictable change, culture shock, self-creation, and alienation. It's about new possibilities, good and bad -- but especially, alien. Postfurry has little to do with Star Wars and Star Trek, and has more in common with the "transhumanist" sci-fi of Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker. Postfurry loves using technology to make furries even weirder.
...postmodern.
For those of you who don't know, postmodernism is a philosophy which believes that all perception of reality is shaped by language, and all value judgements are only meaningful in the context of a given culture. Postmodern art and fashion tend to take ideas from many different eras and cultures and mix them together in ironic, untraditional ways that draw attention to their arbitrariness. This "mix-and-match" attitude is a major part of postfurry. Since Puzzlebox is just a shared textual fantasy, not intended to match up to reality, species can be mixed together without regard to biology, mythology, or geography. Inspirations can be mixed without regard to history or genre. Give your talking koala some tiger stripes and dress him up like a pulp detective from the 1930's. Play a sphinx that's part ocelot and part sugar glider. See what happens when you adapt a Shakespearean plot to a clan of elfin telepaths. It doesn't matter, as long as you do it with sophistication and style.
...psychedelic.
We'd be lying if we said postfurry wasn't influenced by the drug culture. After all, it was founded by a pill-smuggling spacerat and a lava lamp vixen. It's not required that your character be walking around in a blissed-out dreamworld, though Puzzlebox might make more sense if they are... (On Puzzlebox, VR and consciousness-altering technology is so common, it can be hard to draw the line between reality and fantasy.) Like the acidhead and raver subcultures, postfurry is all about the eye candy. Bright glowy colors are favored, though shiny black and chrome are always acceptable -- this goes for the people as well as the clothing. On a deeper level, postfurry is romantic and emotional like psychedelic culture, more interested in experience than in reason. A really good postfurry roleplaying scene should be surreal, shiny, and pretty, like a robot's wet dream. If something you just saw is impossible, don't nitpick it -- just dig it and move on.
...transpecies.
This is probably the most visible difference between furry and postfurry. Postfurry starts with the theme of mixing human and animal characteristics explored by furry fandom and takes it a step further, throwing alien physiologies, mythological beasts, and beings of pure imagination into the mix. Some literal-minded furryfans invest great time and energy in deciding "what's really furry" and what isn't. But postfurries like the borderline cases even better. Insectoids, quasi-sentients, hybrids, centaurs, chimeras, hexipeds, aliens, hermaphrodites, robots, shapeshifters, giant amoebas, angels, demons, drug-induced hallucinations, 12' tall foxes, nine-tailed weasels, plexiglass mice, and all such freaks are welcome. Postfurry breaks furry down into its raw elements: fanciful physiology, the creation of alter egos, and... er... perverted sex. :)
...political.
Like the transhumanist science fiction that inspired it, postfurry leans towards left-libertarian and anarchosocialist political themes: acceptance of unconventional lifestyles and economic systems, distrust of authority and tradition, belief in equality, freedom, and social responsibility, and a love of cities and urban environments.
Since MU*'s in general are post-scarcity communities where even violence is usually consensual, they're a good place to explore new ideas about power and economics. Puzzlebox makes these conditions part of the in-game background, too. It takes place in a world where basic necessities like food and shelter are too plentiful to compete over, physical violence is obsolete as a means of getting your way, and hundreds of cultures co-exist fairly peacefully. It's next to impossible to make somebody do something they don't want to, so conflicts are resolved through "art war": a combination of propaganda, hi-tech graffiti, public debate, media manipulation, meme warfare, intrigue, and psychotronic brainwashing to persuade other people of your views. It's an anarchist paradise, but it's got enough problems to make life interesting.
...theatrical.
Let's be frank: postfurry was founded by some pretty pretentious people. :) But online roleplaying is a lot like improvisational theater, so there's no reason it can't be treated like an art form. That doesn't mean everything people do on Puzzlebox is expected to be brilliant, but it will be more interesting in the long run if people at least take it sincerely. We want you to have a sense of humor, but don't just be random and goofy. Try to make your @desc, dialogue, and poses carry some real emotion and imagination behind them. Don't be afraid to get involved. Better yet, don't be afraid to get caught up in what your character is doing. You are not the audience. You are a featured performer. Stand up and perform. We're all just as scared as you are, but it's less scary for everybody if you give us something interesting to play off of!
...literary.
By the same token, if roleplaying is an art, the same things that make for good art should make for good roleplaying. Remember, art is not reality, and it's not always obliged to resemble it. (Do you really want to see James Bond stuck in London traffic for an hour on the way to work?) Puzzlebox players are encouraged to treat their RP like a novel or a movie, and take advantage of devices like flashbacks, narration, metaphor, editing tricks, and cultural allusions. Feel free to incorporate the unrealness of the MUCK into your roleplaying. (For instance, my character on TapestriesMUCK believed in the "Playerist" religion, where everybody's actions were manipulated by fallible dieties who could be communicated with, and occasionally bribed. :) ) Postfurry is about taking the habits and traditions that furry writers, artists, and roleplayers take for granted (e.g. adopting fan names, distinguishing IC and OOC states, creating stereotypes around certain species) and playing with them in imaginative ways.
...fetishistic.
Like it or not, furry is loaded with sublimated sexuality. Postfurry is no different, except that it finds eroticism in things even further removed from reality. Robophilia, inflation fetishes, unnatural genders, xenophilia, mindplay, transformations, BDSM, costumes -- postfurry looks for sensuality not just in the bio-reproductive act, but in manipulations of the body and mind in general. In the wilds of textual space, there's room for fetishes that could never exist in real life. This doesn't mean Puzzlebox players are obliged to be openly sexual. It just means that sensuality permeates postfurry style and culture -- after all, it's about latent sexuality, anyhow. Hedonism and passion abound, showing through in the shiny clothing, ornamented bodies, and general obsession with style.
...elitist.
Both the Dionysian Scream and Puzzlebox were founded on the principle that the average fan, when you get right down to it, isn't all that interesting, especially in a large and noisy room. The bad manners, powergaming, pick-up lines, atrocious spelling, video-game chatter, and all-around lack of effort made it really hard to do the sort of crazy high-concept RP we wanted to do in public. We noticed the really cool people, the sexy, smart, mature ones, tended to hide out alone in private rooms while the public areas were left to the Unwashed Masses. It's the explicit purpose of postfurry to be a sort of underground for those who want to push the envelope of furry fandom and expand its artistic and intellectual boundaries. Anybody is welcome to participate -- as long as they show emotional depth, a sense of humor, empathy, imagination, and intellectual curiosity. There's no single piece of knowledge needed to be a postfurry, or to play on Puzzlebox, as long as you're willing to learn. If you don't understand some of the concepts in this article, that doesn't mean you're not welcome -- but it might be in your best interests to ask someone to explain them.
...irrational.
The last thing a postfurry wants is for a fact to get in the way of a neat idea. In postfurry, not only does science usually take a backseat to metaphor, it's lucky if we don't make it ride in the trunk. In general, postfurry is science fantasy, not "hard" sci-fi. Images like vulpine lavalamps, 4-cylinder minkcycles, and liquid metal jaguars come straight from the subconscious. They're more important for their symbolism and their storytelling potential than for the little details of how they live and work. Yes, Puzzlebox characters should fit the MUCK background and be internally consistent. But everything else can be explained away with large enough doses of dream logic, faerie dust, nanotech, VR, aerosol hallucinogens, retroactive continuity, and/or charm.