Ivic Wulfe - Host of South Afrifur Pawdcast, passes away

Maybe others who knew Ivic well can flesh out more - we don't yet have a WikiFur entry for him, although the projects he was involved in do, which may say something about the time he put into them. He is also listed as an administrator of the ZA Furries forum - there is some question over its future, like most furry forums, but one of the things it still does is provide a place for remembering those who've gone.

South Afrifur Pawdcast interviewed a whole bunch of people; Fred Patten, Nuka, GreenReaper… in fact, that wasn't even the first time. Hopefully they can continue with their work - and if not, at least it can be appreciated by others. I have a theory that those outside furry fandom's global hubs spend the same amount of time on remote furry activities, and this would definitely qualify.

Ivic was also a ZA Furries administrator since 2018 (and the sole administrator after I stepped down) and a moderator before that. He was also admin/mod on various South African furry Discord and Telegram groups.

Later today I will writer a reflection of my own.

Even though I don't know him. May he rest in peace.

One of my regrets from my time in Pretoria was that I didn't make more of an effort to meet up with Ivic. I had planned to, but he couldn't make it and then covid happened and social activities were completely off the table. I'm not sure how many times we met up at Cape Town furmeets back in the day but the only one I recall happened in early 2010. That has stayed in my memory because he would often bring it up as I was the only person who showed up to join him for sushi. What I do remember was having a really good time just talking with him.

Despite not meeting up physically, we often interacted online, particularly through the forum. Ivic joined near the end of 2008 and was active right until the present. We worked together as forum staff after he became a mod in 2014 and then an admin in 2018. When I stepped down in 2021, I left the forum in his paws. As anyone's who's tried to run anything will know, it can be extremely stressful. Ivic was one of the people I could go to to talk about my problems. He was always willing to listen, offer advice and support me when I needed it.

Ivic's contributions to the furry fandom extended far beyond the forum. He started the South Afrifur pawdcast, which I was honoured to be invited on. Twice! Once at very short notice. That podcast grew from strength to strength and featured many amazing guests. It moved from a small, stand-alone podcast to being one of the regular features on FurryFM. But he still kept going! He took the dormant South Afrifur convention, revived it, grew it and made it a viable annual event.

It's hard to find a fur that's had as big of an impact on the South African furry community as Ivic had. He probably took on more than he should have, but he wanted to help people and make things better. Through his compassion, kindness, work ethic, understanding and willingness to talk (In a pinned tweet he describes himself as "heavily liberal in opinion but open to most conversations in good faith"), he gave us all an example of what we should strive to be. I wish that he had been with us longer, but I am grateful for the time we did have. Ivic was one of the most amazing furs and it will be a long time before the pain of losing him goes away.

In November, Ivic and I had a brief conversation about music when he recommended Freddie Mercury's song Love Me Like There’s No Tomorrow and said that it was what he was using to deal with life. In the same vein, I think it's appropriate to share the Queen song No-One But You (Only the Good Die Young). It was written after Freddie's death and dedicated, not only to his memory, but to the memory of all those who died too soon.