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The 2016 Furry Poll
The Poll is up! The Poll is up! Tell all your friends, the poll is up! Check here!
No pressure! (Art by Grey)
That’s right, it’s time once again for the furry survey, the fandom’s largest marketing survey. Completing the survey helps to give us a more complete picture of the furry fandom, because otherwise, it’s just some critters writing about themselves. Remember, you can take the survey once per year! If you’ve got a few minutes to spare, take some time to fill out the 2016 Furry Poll.
The poll is up here!
DreamKeepers, Volume 4, Descent to the Archives, by David & Liz Lille – Book Review by Fred Patten
Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.
DreamKeepers, volume 4, Descent to the Archives, by David & Liz Lille
Monroe, MI, Vivid Independent Publishing, July 2015, trade paperback $24.99 (117 [+ 11] pages).
“Dreamkeepers is a supernatural fantasy adventure series for teens and up.” (publishers’ advisory)
After two years and an incredibly successful Kickstarter campaign, here is DreamKeepers, volume 4, Descent to the Archives, containing Chapters 10 through 12. By now, so much has happened that you have to first read What Has Gone Before; either page-by-page for free on the DreamKeepers website or as albums from Amazon.com.
To rephrase what I have said in my reviews of the first three volumes, “The Dreamworld is a mysterious reality that parallels our own,” inhabited by funny-animal DreamKeepers, one for each person in the world. They guard us from the nightmares that would drive us mad. “Everyone’s DreamKeeper is completely unique – your personality and subconscious influence your DreamKeeper’s appearance and abilities.” Since there are now over seven billion people in the world, that’s a lot of almost-all different funny animals; but David Lillie has shown in large crowd scenes that he can draw that many DreamKeepers. Most DreamKeepers live in “Anduruna, the largest DreamKeeper city in the DreamWorld.”
“The protagonist is Mace, a young puppy (or is he a kitten?) in Grunn’s orphanage, a Dickensian hellhole along Anduruna’s eastern seacoast. Mace, the equivalent of a ten- or eleven-year-old human boy, is always getting in trouble for his practical jokes. He doesn’t care that he makes it easy for the orphanage’s real troublemakers to blame their tricks on him. But when his best friend is brutally murdered and he is blamed, he is forced to flee with Whip, his little blue companion (don’t call him a pet) into Anduruna’s lower-class throngs. There he meets Lilith Calah, a female counterpart from the aristocracy’s elite Sabbaton Towers who has just escaped a murder attempt (with the help of her half-sister, Namah) that apparently is connected to a black magic plot (and believe me; Dave & Liz can draw really gory and frightening black magic!) by the Dark DreamKeepers to overthrow the DreamKeepers and bring the nightmare hordes into the ascendency.”
The first three volumes, especially volume 3, Intentions Entwined, establish the original quartet of Mace, Whip, Lilith, and Namah; Bast, who seems to be Mace’s violent enemy but helps them because he has romantic feelings for Lilith; and the trio of Woods, a deer, Bill, a cat, and Damon, a dog. All four albums are “wall-to-wall full-color gorgeous art (no margins) on glossy paper”, printed in China.
This poster shows (front row, left to right) Mace, Paige (Mace’s best friend – she’s murdered in vol. 1), Whip, (second row) Bast, Randy (a bad guy), Lilith, (third & fourth rows) Grunn, Tinsel, Wisp, Namah, (background) Scuttles.
Chapter 10, “Throat of Stone”, begins with Woods, Bill, and Damon having escaped underground, where they are drafted into the Underground to fight the Nightmares (which they don’t believe in). Viriathus (Vi, shown on the cover) teaches them against their will how to fight guerilla-style. But she tries unsuccessfully to get them excused from any action, feeling that they would only be cannon-fodder. Lilith’s group of herself, Namah, Mace, and Whip, with the tagalong Bast, tries to sneak away from the Underground to go even deeper underground, into the caverns beneath Anduruna to find the lost Archives and its books. Meanwhile the Nightmare Lord Nabonidus orders the turncoat DreamKeeper Tinsel Nanaja to go into the caverns (despite her extreme reluctance) to find and get captured by Lilith’s group and get taken by them to the Archives, as a spy to get whatever they learn.
This synopsis omits several other things that are going on. (What is Operation Guillotine?)
Oh, I didn’t mention that each character in the DreamWorld has a superhero psionic talent (Whip = telekinesis, Lilith = healing, Namah = ‘ether tendrils’, Tinsel = ‘burning hair tendrils’, etc). It is illegal in Anduruna to use these, so they are usually undeveloped. In Chapter 11, “Echoes”, Nabonidus wants his agents to start using their powers. He sends the childlike but evil Wisp to train them. Lilith’s group go down and down into the caverns and eventually reach the Archives, but Bast’s legs are broken. After Lilith finds what she needs to fight the Nightmares, they are ready to return except for Bast’s broken legs. While they argue over abandoning Bast or not – he orders them to; they refuse – Lilith suddenly discovers that there is a level lower than the Archives.
In Chapter 12, “Tomb of the Forsaken God”, everybody fights. The Good Guys seem to win, but is it a real victory or just a breathing spell?
“It appears there’s a distinct probability of life as we know it horribly ending.”
“Well … at least we won’t have to file taxes anymore.”
To be continued.
It’s all terribly confusing, but so beautiful that you won’t care. The colors are so vivid (the publisher’s name has been chosen carefully) that they practically glow. The cavern sequences abound in deep purples and fiery reds. There’s a lot of commando action with plenty of bloodshed among cute funny animals, some of whom are so fluffy with such long, flowing tails that it’s impossible that they could keep from tripping over them or keep them from getting slammed in doors.
Children of Steel and Interregnum, by John Van Stry – Book Reviews by Fred Patten
Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.
Children of Steel, by John Van Stry.
North Charleston, SC, CreateSpace, February 2012, trade paperback $12.99 (350 pages), Kindle $3.99.
Interregnum, by John Van Stry.
North Charleston, SC, CreateSpace, May 2015, trade paperback $9.99 (198 pages), Kindle $2.99.
John Van Stry first came to the notice of furry fandom with the story “Changes” in Yarf! #51, December 1997. But he began writing before that under the pen name of Banner Von Trippen, with “Waiting for Shadamehr (or Someone Like Him)” in Yarf! #49, July 1997. His serialized Dialene, beginning in Yarf! #64, April 2002, under the Von Trippen name, featured a foxmorph living in his Children of Steel universe. Since then he has been publishing through CreateSpace under his real name. Most of his stories have been published as science fiction, not furry fiction, even when they feature anthropomorphic animals.
Children of Steel is set in a familiar-to-furries future. To quote its rear cover, “Raj is just your average everyday genetically modeled and artificially created anthropomorphic worker for one of the many corporations of the future. Extensively trained and conditioned from birth he’s now indentured for the next fifty years of his life; assuming he doesn’t die first, or somehow manage to pay off his creation and training debts. Created by the corporations to deal with the harsh labor shortages of the twenty second century when humans will no longer take on the dangerous jobs Raj finds himself now in the harsh world of space exploration, trading, corporate maneuverings, and sometimes the even more dangerous fanatics that hate Raj and his fellows.”
Raj Rakir is “‘a sentient leopard-man of .7 human norm on the Rourstat scale,’” created by the Tri-Star Mining and Manufacturing corporation. He is presented “‘with your bill for creation and training by the corporation. As covered in the created species act of 2069 you must now work for above said corporation until you have either paid this bill, or completed a term of 50 years indentured servitude.’” (p. 4) The bill comes to three-plus million new dollars. Even with an expected lifespan of a hundred years – assuming he isn’t killed in one of those dangerous space jobs first – Raj can expect to spend most of his life working for Tri-Star. But he’s not worried about it.
“Simply put, the bottom line was that if it wasn’t for Tri-Star I wouldn’t exist. I did owe them that much.
I flexed a bicep and grinned toothily at my reflection in the mirror, and they did design well. I was the biggest leopard in my class, and the strongest. I’d graduated at the head of my advanced combat classes for a reason: I enjoyed kicking ass. Whatever was coming, I’d find my way through it one way or the other.” (p. 5)
Raj’s first assignment is as the junior shuttle pilot on the Tri-Star space freighter Astra, a transport and cargo ship. Even though the Astra is a commercial ship in peacetime, Raj can see how it can be quickly converted into a troop transport if necessary. He meets other “animen” such as a tiger, a fox, an opossum, and a raccoon. There are frequent mentions of twitching tails. The difference between free born animen versus the crèche-born, raised, and trained animen who are indentured servants to their companies, is shown. Raj is talking with Gabriel, the other junior pilot and a more experienced foxmorph.
“‘How’s it going, Raj?’ He asked setting down some paperwork and pulling up a chair.
‘Not too bad, Gabe, just looking over the new changes. What’s with you?’
‘Same shit, different day. I hear we’re supposed to make Hobson’s Choice in twelve weeks. Any info on that?’
‘About what I’ve heard.’
‘Great, I’ve been there before; you’ve got to check it out. It’s really something.’
‘Well, I’ve never been on another planet, so that in itself sounds pretty thrilling to me.’
‘It’s not just that, Hobson’s is thirty percent animan.’
‘So?’
‘Man you really are fresh from the crèche, aren’t you?’
I glared at him a little, my ears going back a bit. ‘I never claimed otherwise.’
‘Hey, don’t get your fur in a ruff! If you had got out more you would have noticed that on Earth, we’re not well liked. Heck in a lot of places we’re not even allowed.’
‘Well, I will admit that I did lead a pretty sheltered life in that aspect. Maybe the company does look out for us?’
‘Oh, there’s no doubt about that. Tri-Star actually treats us like we rate. But on Hobson’s the vast majority feel that way. They still got some Auntie-anns, but you won’t dance with the hangman for defending yourself in a fair fight.’
Auntie-ann was slang for the anti-animen people. On Earth they made up a pretty sizeable chunk of the population and we’d been warned continually to avoid them. It was nice to know that my instructors had been honest about their being less of them on the other planets.
‘And you think you would on Earth?’
‘Damn right, Judge Lynch is out there and waiting!’” (p. 15)
There have been brief mentions throughout this that Raj had a sister and best friend among his siblings from the crèche, Cassandra, another leopardmorph or Lepman; but she has already graduated and gone out into space. Raj hopes that he’ll run into her. In addition to getting to know the rest of the crew, Raj is expected to join “his clan” – the other leopards in the Astra’s crew. There are ten of them – Balizar, Herza, Mist, Katrina, and others — and they become Raj’s new close-knit family and important secondary characters in Children of Steel. He misses Cassandra, though.
That’s the setup. Children of Steel is good interstellar military space opera with a furry cast, mostly anthro leopards, told in a pleasantly chatty style. Raj’s experiences begin mildly – a couple of interesting but non-exciting shipboard incidents – and work up over 200+ pages. After carrying cargo, the Astra switches to carrying troops.
“After telling him [a tiger commando] about the makeup of the hundred or so troops we had on board, he told me about his group. They turned out to be tough sounding group all right. About two hundred big cats, almost a hundred Rhino’s, about another hundred wolves, and the remaining hundred made up of specialists; Eagles, Weasels, Badgers, and Beavers mostly. The last two groups being sappers.” (p. 93)
(The above paragraph is a good example of the poor proofreading in Children of Steel. Other examples are “What not in two months?”, “So tell us about yourself Raj”, and “I found my quarter’s pretty quickly, I was sharing a room with three other’s.”; but it’s not too bad.)
From being a pilot on a ship carrying troops, Raj becomes a soldier himself; then the Astra goes to one of the human-supremacy planets. Much more happens, including exploring new planets and a lot of bloody military action. Tri-Star gets involved in a full-scale war. There are surprises for the reader.
Raj is constantly getting into trouble because of his leopard’s nature. Children of Steel is more than a funny-animal novel, and leopards like Raj have a reputation as hot-headed and troublemakers.
“‘I’ve seen your records, Raj, you’ve got a real classic leopard’s temper. If you don’t control it, you’re going to end up in real bad trouble and I’d hate to see that happen to someone as talented as you.’” (p. 157)
Leopards also have less inhibitions about incest, and it soon becomes clear that Cassandra and Raj are more than brother-and-sister crèche-mates.
That’s Children of Steel (cover uncredited). Interregnum (cover by Amanda Rozga) is more of the same. The war is over, but as the winners, losers, and survivors of World War II could have told you, the transition to peacetime isn’t immediate and isn’t all smooth. Tri-Star is a winner and has inherited several new worlds from the losers and defunct neutrals. The Astra is assigned to investigate them. There are enemy holdouts. There are survivors to be rescued. Raj is kept busy. Readers who enjoy Children of Steel (which will include most fans of military s-f, and s-f about uplifted animals) will enjoy the sequel.
One Crazy-Brave Raccoon
Christopher Locke has worked for many years in the television industry. In 2004 he read the book Fast Food Nation and went through a personal transformation… emerging as a passionate animal rights advocate. He also decided to have a go at writing full-time for a living. The result is a new trilogy of fanciful fiction for young adults called The Enlightenment Adventures. The first book in the series, published in 2015, is called Persimmon Takes on Humanity. “What would you do if you saw someone committing unimaginable acts of cruelty? Turn the other way or defend those in need—no matter the cost? That’s the dilemma thrust upon Persimmon, a clever and compassionate raccoon, and her loyal forest friends. Instantly, the courageous critters spring into action, risking their own lives to rescue any animal they see suffering at the hands of humans. What the team doesn’t know is just how rampant this violence really is, and soon their exciting rescue missions turn shockingly dangerous and deadly. Will they succeed in saving the animals of the world from humans’ brutality, or will they fall victim to the powerful system of abuse they’re trying so desperately to end?” Persimmon is available now at Amazon, and you can find out more about the series at the author’s web site.
image c. 2016 Fathoming Press
TigerTails Radio Season 9 Episode 42
Ep 64 – Technically Correct - Characters, plots and themes are all important but all require glue to put them together. We discuss that glue which is known as the aspects of writing technically well: sentence and paragraph structure, grammar, word choice,
Characters, plots and themes are all important but all require glue to put them together. We discuss that glue which is known as the aspects of writing technically well: sentence and paragraph structure, grammar, word choice, punctuation, etc. How can you learn to write technically well and how will it help your stories? To help tackle this topic we bring on editor at Sofawolf, Fugue, to sit down with us and discuss.
Send us your feedback, questions, concerns, complaints:
@FangsAndFonts
Facebook.com/FangsAndFonts
Fangs and Fonts
Click below to Listen http://www.fangsandfonts.com/FnF/Episodes/Ep64-Technically_Correct.mp3Download here | Open Player in New Window
Ep 64 – Technically Correct - Characters, plots and themes are all important but all require glue to put them together. We discuss that glue which is known as the aspects of writing technically well: sentence and paragraph structure, grammar, word choice, punctuation, etc. How [...]Guild News: May 2016
Welcome to our newest members Marshall L. Moseley, Gre7g Luterman, Thomas “Faux” Steele, Televassi, and Angela “LemurKat” Oliver!
Member NewsIn short fiction news, Mary E. Lowd’s flash fiction “Take Them To The Happiness Zoo” appeared in Theme of Absence last month, and Rechan’s story “The Monster Next Door” can be found in Creepy Campfire Quarterly #2.
In poetry news, the Second [adjective][species] Poetry Collection is now live, including poems from several FWG members, and [a][s] also featured a selection of animal-themed poems by the collection’s editor, Renee Carter Hall (day 1, day 2, and day 3).
(Members: Want your news here? Start a thread in our Member News forum!)
Market NewsUpcoming deadlines: Issue 3 of A Glimpse of Anthropomorphic Literature is open until May 15.
New markets: The third volume of the charity anthology Wolf Warriors is seeking wolf-themed fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction (deadline June 15), and the second volume of the poetry anthology Civilized Beasts is open for submissions from now until October 1 (see this thread for guidelines and updates).
Remember to keep an eye on our Calls for Submissions thread and our Publishing and Marketing forum for all the latest news and openings!
Guild NewsMembers, beginning on May 16, we’ll be voting on this proposal to change the FWG by-laws by adding two new officer positions. Watch your inbox for the ballot!
The FWG University is now open! Our first workshop, the FWG Poetry Workshop and Primer, begins tomorrow, May 2. It’s being held entirely in the forums, and all poets are welcome to join in.
Voting is now open through July 1 for this year’s Cóyotl Awards.
Want to hang out and talk shop with other furry writers? Come join us in the forum shoutbox for the Coffeehouse Chats, Tuesdays at 7 p.m. Eastern and Thursdays at 12 p.m. Eastern. More info on the Coffeehouse Chats is here. (Remember, our forums are open to everyone, not just FWG members. Come register and join the conversation!)
Elsewhere on the Internet, we have a Goodreads group with a bookshelf featuring books by our members. Feel free to add any members’ books we’ve missed so far (see the instructions here on how to do that).
Remember, we’re always open for guest blog post submissions from FWG members — it’s a great way to help out fellow writers. See our guidelines for the details.
Have a creative and successful month! If you have news, suggestions, or other feedback to share, send an email to furwritersguild@gmail.com or leave a comment below.
S5 Episode 14: Online and Long Distance Relationships - Are online relationships and long distance relationships are REAL? Roo and Tugs are joined by Hobbes and Amy to pursue these questions. We explore these questions, then take a quick detour for the 50
NOW LISTEN!
Show notes coming soon! S5 Episode 14: Online and Long Distance Relationships - Are online relationships and long distance relationships are REAL? Roo and Tugs are joined by Hobbes and Amy to pursue these questions. We explore these questions, then take a quick detour for the 50
Ruh Roh!
If you haven’t caught the word, this May DC Comics and Hanna Barbera plan to take Scooby Doo and the gang in a very… different direction, with the premier of the new full-color comic book series Scooby Apocalypse. “Those meddling kids — Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and their dog, Scooby-Doo — get more ghost-debunking than they bargained for when faced with a fundamental change in their world. The apocalypse has happened. Old rules about logic no longer apply. The creatures of the night are among us, and the crew of the Magical Mystery Machine has to fight to survive—because in the apocalyptic badlands of the near-future, the horrors are real! This new monthly series takes Scooby and the gang to a whole new level and features character designs by comics superstar Jim Lee!” Plus writing by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis, with regular art by Howard Porter. Read an interview with Mr. Giffen over at Newsarama.
image c. 2016 DC Comics
Does Taking Parents to a Furcon Help?
I am a 16 year old youngfur who discovered his furry side not that long ago. I first told my brother I was a furry (I'm happy I can confide in him with private stuff). Anyway, as time went on, I finally managed to go through the trouble of telling my father that I'm as furry. He seemed to understand it, though he is a little cautious about the subject (I explained him it's not what he thought). But I eventually did bring up that there's a convention being held in grand rapids, and that I liked to maybe go. He says if I do, it would just be me and him. He has not told my mother yet, or my older sister (thank god), so that helps a little. Anyway my point is, in the chance I do get to go, I have been told bringing your parents to a furcon can help them better understand the fandom, I like to believe this but I'm not sure how exactly this is the case. Can you maybe explain how this might help him understand better, and maybe some tips on what I should do to help things be less awkward if we do go.
I apologize for this long long paragraph of writing.
Thanks for your help, I appreciate what you do for us people and am looking forward to the furry book!
Sincerely,
Scar
* * *
Dear Scar,
Thanks for writing :-3 Yes, I have mentioned this before in earlier columns about taking one’s parents or guardians to a furry con. While there have been one or two exceptions, most parents have a great time and learn to understand better what a furry is.
I have not been to the Great Lakes Fur Con because it debuted in 2012 after I had already moved to California. But, checking on the website there, it looks to be like most furcons. I see there are forums, games, a fursuit competition, a charity, a guest of honor, and so on. This is all very typical of a furry convention.
The reason it will help your parents is that they get to meet furries in real life and see that we’re just people (oooh, shocking, I know). Mostly younger people, yes, but also some greymuzzles. We go to school, many have jobs, and we’re just trying to have some fun and maybe blow off a little steam by being with people who share our interests.
My suggestion to you is you approach it like any other convention, such as a comic book convention or a Star Trek convention. All of these have things like forums, guest speakers, and places to shop for things of interest, as well as people dressing up in fun costumes. Really, the only significant difference between a furcon and, say, a Star Trek convention is that the attendees are creating characters who are not part of a franchise owned by a huge corporation like Marvel or Disney. Therefore, there is a lot more freedom involved, and a lot more creativity and adventure.
Go. Take your parents. Have a blast. I hope y’all have a fun time!
Hugs,
Papabear
Is It a Furry Movie? - What makes a furry movie? Is it the subject mater, the creator, or something else? Join the WagzTail crew this week to talk about movies in general, but especially every furry's favorite recent movie, Zootopia.
What makes a furry movie? Is it the subject mater, the creator, or something else? Join the WagzTail crew this week to talk about movies in general, but especially every furry’s favorite recent movie, Zootopia.
Metadata and Credits Is It a Furry Movie?
Runtime: 39:39m
Cast: Braniff, KZorroFuego, Levi
Editor: Levi
Format: 128kbps ABR split-stereo MP3 Copyright: © 2016 WagzTail.com. Some Rights Reserved. This podcast is released by WagzTail.com as CC BY-ND 3.0.
Is It a Furry Movie? - What makes a furry movie? Is it the subject mater, the creator, or something else? Join the WagzTail crew this week to talk about movies in general, but especially every furry's favorite recent movie, Zootopia.
What makes a furry movie? Is it the subject mater, the creator, or something else? Join the WagzTail crew this week to talk about movies in general, but especially every furry’s favorite recent movie, Zootopia.
Metadata and Credits Is It a Furry Movie?
Runtime: 39:39m
Cast: Braniff, KZorroFuego, Levi
Editor: Levi
Format: 128kbps ABR split-stereo MP3 Copyright: © 2016 WagzTail.com. Some Rights Reserved. This podcast is released by WagzTail.com as CC BY-ND 3.0.
The Dream Team Won’t Make You Scream
Brendan McCarthy is an artist and designer well known as one of the creators of 2015’s hit movie Mad Max: Fury Road. In the meantime he also created a full-color comic called Dream Gang, which was serialized in Dark Horse Presents. “A group of psychics project themselves into the dream worlds at night, exploring other people’s dreams. But they uncover a conspiracy to invade and enslave humanity from within by a malevolent force from the dark side of the mind.” As you can see, anthropomorphic characters also play a role in the gang! Now Dark Horse have assembled the complete Dream Gang series into a single trade paperback graphic novel. Check out Dark Horse’s preview over at their web site, and look for Dream Gang this July.
image c. 2016 Dark Horse Comics
Fake Furry News 6 of 6 PLAYLIST
ep. 37 - Masterbation Isn't Cheating - old episode that didn't transfer over for some re…
old episode that didn't transfer over for some reason, so re-uploading! ep. 37 - Masterbation Isn't Cheating - old episode that didn't transfer over for some re…
The Second [adjective][species] Poetry Collection
The moon hangs full and heavy over the clearing, and a bonfire crackles in the still night, sending up swirls of orange sparks as each log falls into ash and ember. Its smoke carries the fragrance of white sage and cedar, of sandalwood, of myrrh. Its light dances over the pattern of stripes, the white ruff, and at last the burning eyes, a wash of gold over emerald as the tigress’ gaze catches and holds.
Greetings, traveler, and welcome. You have the look of a seeker about you — how well I know that restless heart!
There are others of your kind here, ancient and modern, their songs dreaming, wondering, praising. Here, in their words, you might find a moment’s peace, or perhaps there will only be more questions. On a night like this, who can say? Those might be spirits gathered out there, beyond the reach of the flames — but then again, it may only be a trick of the light. That might be a drumbeat; it might be a heartbeat; it might only be your own.
The fire is lit. The smoke is rising. In the end, all questions become one:
Will you come and join the dance?
Faith
Feather swept incense
A shadowed trance
Invite the animal inside
Totem dancing, dream drumming.
Here now, here now, here now be.
Axolotl
I was born inside a mountain with a feather on my tongue,
chanting anthems of ekphrastic static, empty as a drum.
The sun was my umbrella, all the stars: my lemonade:
The comets were my bossa nova bubble serenade.
As an infant, I was infinite.
I stretched across the cradle with an angel’s appetite,
Brighter than a quasar’s eyes, and strobing with delight.
I danced with lonely Ganymede, rode Cygnus to the moon,
played jacks with panthers, stoats and jackals, darts with a baboon.
As an infant, I was infinite.
As an infant, I was infinite.
In time, I grew beyond my measure, shed my astral vision,
Learned to view the day-to-day with clinical precision.
I built myself a cage of paper, silicon, and bone,
Crawled inside to hunker down, and reckoned it a home
Alone inside my brittle skin, as slick as any lie,
The rictus grin I glibly spin became my alibi.
Every thread of every life weaves death in its design–
But to die is to be born again: an endless pantomime,
And as an infant, I am infinite.
–Morris Astricannum Stegosaurus
Cernunnos
Your white-bone tips
Curl, from brown locks
And braided hair,
Gleaming with morning dew.
You come silent
Before the birdsong stirs.
I know many would cut
Those boughs free,
But you keep wild, ungroomed,
Tossing your head, to and fro,
Finding weight
Only from the golden torc
Clasped about your neck.
I wish to know what it is
To be unashamed,
Reborn from a sick half-beast,
That has no horns to shed in spring.
Every Fall I saw them off.
On Furred Knees
My eyes see not the colours of stained glass windows,
in reflections of broken bottles in the street.
My paws follow the shifting shades of seasons past,
in the leaves rustling around my feet.
My nose smells the ragged people picking through the refuse,
seeking the lives they’ve lost.
My eyes, but they could weep at all that I have claimed,
while ignoring greed’s cruel costs.
Gates of Heavens closed to me, against my fur and claws.
Bloody baptismal waters flow when thrice I wash my paws.
Shadow creatures feeding on sin and ever more demands.
I’m told this is religion, and I don’t need to understand.
My words are prayers; the fuzz of dandelions,
plucked, puffed upon, lost to the mourning breeze.
My tail makes prayers unheard from here, outside the dome,
though I kowtow, praying on my knees.
My words climb to the spire, there shattered, thrown down,
to rain upon my grey fur. . . cruel, and sharp, and broken.
My ears hide beneath the kippah, for the words
that can build bridges have yet to be spoken.
My teeth, my mane, my harem, my tail and my roar,
Chapel doors close to me, God’s child I am no more.
Life laid open. . . on my knees, thus The Book commands.
These are symbols of religion, I don’t need to understand.
My paws, a beggar’s bowl, held out for the answers
to questions lost in the surging crowd.
My paw touches the word of God, graffiti,
asking awful questions I dare not speak aloud.
My paws reaching from faith to faith,
finding faded shadows of endless broken dreams.
My paws hold memories I use to flay myself,
to hear Him heckling in my sobbing screams.
Genetic miracle of recreation within sacred vessels held,
Caretaker of animals failed, so man and animal meld.
“Mea culpa? Tua culpa! Four Horsemen your true children planned!”
There is no questioning Religion, I don’t need to understand.
‘Twas Grace that taught my heart to fear, that a wretch I be.
Made by Him, like unto Him, so doth a fearful wretch be He?
Faiths beneath this stained shroud, as countless as the sands.
Finally comes the knowing. Let there be light!
At last I understand. . .
No more “Please”. . . for Truth I’ve found,
Hidden away from where I wept upon my knees. . .
No Divine to hear me. . . no Holy Host to hear me. . .
God chooses not to hear the changed ones. . .
Not even one of us, praying on furred knees.
-BanWynn Oakshadow
Little Bird
The sickened earth, there I was born
To live the many lies forever;
To seek through sinful skies for home
So I could make my nest with thorns
Of painted gold that none would sever.
There came a day when I had roamed
Unto some bush of thorns all gold.
I flew into that bush; my beak
Was set to seize this glittered growth,
But I was snared within its’ hold.
My savior stopped along the street,
And pulled me free. I gave a tweet.
The Butterfly Effect
“Believe with all your abdomen,” they say,
“And flap along with every confidence
That you’re the reason night will follow day
Without a break: we stir the turbulence.
“Destruction dances where our tarsi flex;
Antennae twitching, we command the world!
Our duty? Both to comfort and perplex.
So fly your colors proud, your wings unfurled!”
I try. I do. I flit from bush to tree
Imagining the force that I exert
Has toppled walls and stilled the swelling sea,
That I dispense the pleasure and the hurt–
But really, all I want’s a little sip
Of nectar. You can keep dictatorship!
Muezza
A man washes, he’s heard the call to pray
In night’s vestige, before approaching day,
But once he’s done, with mild alarm he notes
His loved cat sleeps on the sleeve of his coat.
He wills she not wake, deftly quick is he,
A snip and a flick, his sole robe is free.
That morning, close amidst folk who believe,
Muhammad leads prayers with a missing sleeve.
Centuries pass. In a dream-laden nap,
I see my lost cat by Muhammad’s lap.
Climbing up, she settles and cutely purrs,
Secure in whatever scant thoughts are hers.
-Dwale
The Dogs Assure Me
The dogs assure me:
There are volumes of meaning –
Life and death –
And time;
Past, present, future –
In the scent of a rotting fish left after the flood,
Or a trace of scat,
Or the coyote, long passed,
But not everyone reads poetry.
I’m not so lucky, all told:
The rich scent of meaning –
Heady, intoxicating –
Rises only from words
And the way you rest your hands on the table.
Cave God
As you made fire,
so you made me.
From the skull of a bear you killed
not because she was attacking
or had attacked before
but because she might attack
From the skin of a sleeping lion
you tracked and speared and thanked
From these things, you made a god.
From nothing, you made the idea of god.
You named me as you name your children.
In me you pour your prayers
your fears
as you store meat in your clay pots.
I am your bear-lion-god.
I am dead things. Empty space. And power.
What do we make next?
Thanks once again to Renee Carter Hall (“Poetigress”), who is a writer and poet whose work has been published both inside and outside the furry fandom. She is the current president of the Furry Writers’ Guild and was Writer Guest of Honor at RainFurrest 2015.
Learning to Go, by Friday Donnelly – Book Review by Fred Patten
Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.
Learning to Go, by Friday Donnelly.
Capalaba, Queensland, Australia, Jaffa Books, May 2015, trade paperback $15.00 ([2] + 191 pages), Kindle $5.00.
Learning to Go was published by Jaffa Books in Australia for FurDU 2015 in Gold Coast, Queensland on May 1-3. It is also sold by AnthroAquatic in the U.S; hence the price in U.S. dollars and the Amazon Kindle edition.
Readers had better consider Learning to Go to be R- or NC-17-rated. It is about two homosexual men and a male prostitute who are only thinly-disguised as anthropomorphic animals. There is considerable explicit sex description and talk.
Rufus Timberly is a young man (tiger) as the submissive in a dominator/submissive relationship with his boyfriend, Victor (lion). He is unhappy that Victor is turning out to be the dom in more than their bedroom trysts.
“Rufus wished now that he hadn’t switched jobs. He had been offered the position by his boyfriend, who claimed the office could use some competent people. That should have been a warning sign. In a remarkably short time, Victor stopped seeing him as competent and started seeing him as just as bad as everyone else.” (p. 5)
After a dinner date during which Vincent publicly berates him and walks out, leaving Rufus stuck with the cheque, Rufus turns to a commercial online gay prostitute for sexual release.
“He decided to bite the bullet and search the internet for, ‘Dom in Holton.” Searching for one didn’t commit him to hiring them, he figured. After such an exhausting day, his better judgment was too tired to convince him he shouldn’t.
The results surprised him. Hundreds of relevant hits appeared. Some were craigslist ads, others professional websites. The websites confused him at first; all billed themselves as ‘non-sexual.’ Rufus couldn’t understand why a non-sexual dom existed, and why anyone hired them. Then he realized through a bit more searching that it was a lie, so that the sites appeared strictly legal.” (p. 8)
Rufus picks the website of Bennett Augustine, a German shepherd dom. Bennett is businesslike and very satisfactory. Afterwards, Rufus pays him extra while the two just relax and talk.
“The dom gave him a cocky grin. ‘Lots of guys fall for escorts, prostitutes, doms, etc. Girls too, though that’s not a problem for me. Some people think sex equals love, or something. Or maybe they just want to get stuff for free rather than paying. Or most frequently, I think, they don’t know how to start a real relationship and try to pay for one. You’d think it would be good for business, but it’s not. It usually ends up with bad publicity, or worse, an arrest. I have to be careful about that kind of stuff, in this business.” (p. 14)
Not surprisingly, Victor blows up when Rufus tells him of the affair, pointing out that it was after Victor walked out on him. Victor accuses Rufus of consorting with a street whore. Both are casual players of the Japanese game of go, and Rufus considers their relationship in those terms.
“They sat staring at each other for a great length of time. Rufus analyzed the situation. He needed to always stay one step ahead of Victor, figuring out his next attack, and readying a defense or counterattack, and then be ready for Victor’s response to that. It was like a game of go, only with the board and territories indistinct. Rufus played go well. But the problem lay in the fact that this wasn’t actually go, only something vaguely like it. And Victor was better at this other, indistinct game – and much smarter. Rufus believed that was the main reason Victor liked him so much; he was one of the few people who offered him a challenge in it. That, and Rufus never went for the throat. He always played defensively, and that meant every time he bested Victor, the lion could get up and try a different tactic. Rufus didn’t have that luxury. One misstep, and everything between them could be gone. While dangerous and exciting for Rufus, he got tired of it before Victor did. Rufus lost the game sometimes, but Victor always came back a day or two later.” (p. 27)
Victor eventually returns but their relationship continues to be considered in go terms by Rufus. Victor promises to see a therapist for his anger issues, but Rufus doubts that he really has.
“Rufus decided to launch right into things. ‘You didn’t go to your appointment.’
‘You were spying on me?’ Distraction, Rufus thought; ignore it. ‘You have a lot of nerve to not trust me after what you did.’ Attack. Victor was attacking another side of the board, trying to draw attention away from the important area Rufus was trying to contest and to a past failing. But it was back to a position they’d been in before, and Rufus couldn’t allow that.” (p. 46)
After several weeks, Bennett reenters the scene and immediately begins giving him conflicting advice. Rufus eventually realizes that Victor and Bennett are both doms and he is a sub. He needs to stop being influenced by whoever is the most recent to talk to him, and learn to stand up on his own.
In a major subplot, Rufus decides to become a more serious go player. He joins a club of expert go players, and eventually enters a go tournament with the advice of his player friend Mark (fox). Rufus considers that, metaphorically, he is the prize in a go game that Bennett and Victor are playing (cover by Peta Fenton).
Learning to Go is a funny-animal novel with no fantasy except the anthropomorphic-animal nature of the characters. It is a well-written story of an abusive m/m relationship, and of what the sub member in a dom/sub partnership decides to do about it. This is more of a true-life self-discovery novel than an anthropomorphic-animal fantasy. Read accordingly.
Interview with Nuka, the Furry Social Psychologist
(This is the original interview conducted in English with Nuka, by Mike Retriever. If you wish to read the Spanish translation, you can do so here.)
Nuka (full name Dr. Courtney Plante) is a 29-year-old furry born in Canada who lives part-time in Iowa (Midwest USA), where he works as a post-doctoral researcher. Besides previous studies, he holds a Ph.D. in Social Psychology. He’s co-founder and member of the International Anthropomorphic Research Project (IARP), through which, with a team of highly qualified colleagues, has researched & published over 15 peer-reviewed papers about the furry fandom and related fandoms. Through this project he’s kept making, for years, scientifically sound psychological survey-studies, aiming to understand the demographic landscape, social connections, and behaviour, of individual furries and the fandom as a whole.
MR: First of all Nuka, you look really cute in your fursuit with the doctoral garb! What was the reaction amongst university colleagues?
Nu: Aww, thank you! Well, it didn’t really surprise any of my grad school colleagues – they’d all known me for a number of years, and I imagine they were pretty sure I’d throw on the suit for convocation. The much more interesting part was walking around campus with the suit and graduation garb on – I think I wound up on about 1,000 people’s Facebook pages the next day, because all the other graduating students wanted pictures with the Doctor Cat – I think a bunch of them figured I was a mascot or something.
MR: 
You should have been! Nuka for mascot!
MR: I’ve seen some evolving in your FA gallery, do you now identify yourself more with a pony rather than a cat?
Nu: Nope, Nuka’s always been, and will always be, a cat. About the only evolving he’s done over the years has been to go from his original puke-green to Kool-aid blue (since I’m color-blind, I decided to make him blue, since I can actually see it!) The pony artwork on my FA gallery has more to do with my learning to doodle in recent years. I enjoy My Little Pony, and the style is relatively simple to pick up, so I figured it would be as good a place as any for me to learn to draw!
MR: Oooohh! Well yes, the artwork of MLP is simple. Just out of curiosity, do you know what kind of color blindness do you have? Protanopia / Deuteranopia? [the most common]
Nu: As a matter of fact, I do! Deuteranopia – it’s when the “red” and “green” cones in your eye are a bit warped, and have overlapping ranges of light wavelengths that they respond to. 
Sorry – I’ve taught courses in perceptual psychology, so I’m used to teaching / explaining color-blindness like this!
MR: Foremost, I want to begin by talking about your current research, so furries get to know what it is and how they can contribute. It’s a longitudinal study. What does this mean? How is it different from previous surveys?
Nu: Well, at any given time, we’ve got several different studies in preparation or on the go. But yes, our longest and still-ongoing study is the longitudinal study, and you can compare it to some of our previous studies, which are called cross-sectional studies. In a cross-sectional study, you take a “snapshot” of the fandom, so to speak. Basically, give a survey to a bunch of furries to get an idea what the fandom is like right now. The problem with cross-sectional studies, however, is that they can’t answer questions that have a “time” element to them. So, if we ask furries “how do you feel about animal rights?” and “do you identify with your fursona species?”, we may find that those two variables are correlated. However, we can’t say, in a cross-sectional study, which one came first: does the person’s caring about animal rights cause them to identify more with their fursona, or the other way around? A longitudinal study lets us do that: we survey the same people over and over again, once a year, giving them the same questions (and some different ones), to see how their answers change over time. This lets us figure out “oh, variable X changed and then, a year later, variable Y changed, so X must have caused Y!”
As for how to contribute – any furry over the age of 18 is welcome to participate! [Please, underage furries, don’t falsify scientific studies.] The easiest way is to send me an e-mail ( cplante (at) iastate.edu ) and let me know that you’re interested in participating. All we need is an e-mail address where you can be reached, and then, once a year, for the foreseeable future, we will send you a link to that year’s survey.
MR: One of the things you want to research further through the longitudinal study is, from a general perspective, why do people leave the fandom. You’ve stated that furries, for the most part, don’t leave the fandom because of some sudden event, but they lose interest gradually. Also, we are bad at predicting when this might happen. What do you know so far?
Nu: Funny enough, we still know very little about folks leaving the fandom as of yet! It may take another few years of the longitudinal study before we have enough people who leave to be able to provide some illuminating responses. At this point, all we’ve really got are theories. That said, they’re not theories we pulled out of nothing – many of them are based on well-established psychological principles. I, personally, believe that the biggest source of furries leaving the fandom is a combination of “the fandom isn’t what it used to be” (changing norms, shows, artists, etc… over time make it less familiar) and the fact that most furries end up developing a group of friends through the community and, over time, they can hang out with those friends without “needing” the furry side of things. They can just hang out outside of a convention or meet-up. But yes, that last point is true – people are notoriously bad at predicting their future feelings – there have been a number of psychological studies about that very thing, showing that we’re supremely confident that we know how we’ll feel about something… until it happens. And the evidence is there – the vast majority of furries believe that they’ll still be in the fandom 10 years from now [see graph]. But the data suggests otherwise!
"I wasn't a furry 10 years ago... I've gotten more furry since then.. and I will stay this furry for at least 10 more years."-->
MR: You have, what I believe is, one of the coolest jobs on the planet. In your daily workplace & research, you get to do science, mixed with furry. You sometimes lecture students on what the furry fandom is, and they have to endure it. How has this made you who you are, or changed your life?
Nu: Oooh, great question! I would definitely agree that I’m lucky enough to have one of the coolest jobs on the planet. I get to study furries, and video games – two of my favorite hobbies. And I get to do science, on top of it all, which is always mind-blowing to me. I can sit down, analyze some data, and say, at the end of the day, “I learned something today that, in all of the history of mankind, no one has ever known.” That’s really humbling, and it definitely beats the day-to-day grind of an office or routine job. And actually, I wouldn’t say that my students “endure” my lectures on furries at all – it’s almost always the lecture everyone talks about and looks forward to – so much so that the attendance in those classes shoots up dramatically, and other professors ask me to give the “furry lecture” to their classes!
As for how it’s affected or changed me, well, I would say that it’s helped me to feel like I fit in someplace, both academically and in the fandom. When I first joined the fandom, I was nervous and overwhelmed – there were so many amazing artists, writers, performers, musicians, organizers, and very social people, and all I could think about was how I wanted to contribute to it somehow – I wanted to give something to the community! But I’m not much of an artist, or a musician, and I’m pretty shy! But I like science, and I’m pretty good with stats, so I found my own way to give something to the community that’s given me so much! And it’s helped me find my way in academia – I no longer feel that sense of floundering, of wondering “what can I study that’s new, that hasn’t been done before?”
MR: It’s a very unique, useful and notable way to contribute!
MR: In 2012 you were featured on a National Geographic episode of the series “Taboo”, Season 8, Episode 2: “Secret Lives” (link 01 ⇒) (link 02 ⇒). The furry section of the documentary was concise, not really very informative [they confuse furry fandom with therianthropy e.g.], but actually not unpleasant to watch. You appear calm, explaining your interest for furry as a means of self-expression. Also, you looked quite more hairy than nowadays. Was the experience of being filmed / interviewed satisfying?
Nu: Ugh… To be honest, I was actually pretty unhappy with the whole thing. The whole experience was incredibly stressful. I’m a pretty shy and private person, so having video cameras around me for 8-10 hours a day for a few days at a time was a bit overwhelming. I don’t think the piece was in any way “bad”, but it was very disappointing, when I consider what it “could” have been. I was really hoping that my role on the show would be as an expert – as a person who could give statistics and numbers and really teach people “hey, here’s what furries are.” And in fact, there was over an hour of footage shot where I was giving all sorts of facts and figures about furries. Of course, none of that got used! Instead, they focused on the fact that I was a furry, which is a bit silly to me. I would consider myself interesting as an expert on furries, but as a furry myself, I’m actually pretty boring! I don’t really have any exciting stories to tell about myself, my fursona is pretty typical as far as furries go… I honestly suggested that they use me for the “boring data stuff”, and go out to find really interesting furries – furries who are amazing fursuit performers or who have really cool stories about things they’ve done or how they got into the fandom. But, instead, they focused on me – arguably one of the most boring furries on the planet! Like I said, it wasn’t bad or insulting or anything like that to the fandom. But it was a missed opportunity, I think.
MR: This is a sentiment many other furries can agree with. No matter how much research and passion and cool stuff they put into giving to the media, ultimately they cut off anything that might be culturally significant, profound or interesting. In the best case scenario, it becomes watered down to the point of boring.
Nu: And it goes beyond that too… You could tell that they had misconceptions about furries from the get-go. When they arrived, it was clear that we were not what they were expecting. They showed up, and a bunch of us were at my house, playing cards. They were like “okay… so when do you put on the suits and run around?” We were like “we don’t really do that outside of conventions or furry gatherings.” They honestly thought that I spent the day lying around the house in my fursuit or walking around everywhere in the suit. And, when they realized that wasn’t the case, it became clear to them that, as a group, furries don’t live up to all the hype we get from the media. We’re not really as “out there”, “wild”, and “freaky” when you get to know us. Of course, you can’t do a show about that, so they wheel out a bunch of fursuiters to catch everyone’s eye.
MR: Last year a group of journalists contacted the furries here [Madrid], to record for one of their programmes about stuff that goes on in people’s lives. They had a set number of things they wanted to record with furries, including, in fursuit, going to a bowling alley, and eating at a restaurant. The people here said “We don’t do bowling, that’s something they sometimes do in America but not here. And why would we want to have dinner with the fursuit on, it’s impractical, and you might stain the fur.” “We just hang out & do regular stuff mostly.” So they looked for fursuiters somewhere else in another city. And what do you guess, some months later those show up on TV, bowling, and eating clumsily at a restaurant in their fursuits.
Nu: And they can’t fathom it! They can’t imagine that, yeah, we don’t go out and do crazy stuff in the fursuits everyday (or, even more amazing to them- we don’t all have fursuits!). Eeeyup. All the footage they got of me in the fursuit was literally from my first week of ever wearing my fursuit (I’d happened to get it that week). I was trying to explain to them that I didn’t know what I was doing, that they were really better off finding a person with a professionally-made suit, and with a lot of experience suiting 
MR: Those furry fingers wiggling in the ‘documentary’ were super cute though.
MR: The large majority of furries have a fursona that’s relatively fixed, and also personal. You’ve found that most of our fursonas are animal versions of ourselves, not designed on a whim but carefully chosen by what we feel represents us best: our personality, our passions, or other traits. But also, they reflect “better” versions of ourselves. You say we give our fursonas qualities we’d personally like to have: more friendliness, more optimism, extroversion, attractiveness, confidence… Would you say, therefore, that by acting through our fursonas (be it fursuiting, role-playing, interacting with the community…) we can improve ourselves, therapeutically?
Nu: Hmm, I’d be a bit hesitant to use the word “therapeutically” there, but otherwise, you’ve got it right! There’s a body of research in psychology which suggests that we have multiple “selves” – two of which are our “ideal” selves – who we would be if we had the choice, and our “actual” selves – who we actually are. In general, this research shows that the closer our actual selves are to our ideal selves, the happier we tend to be. And I think, and have been working to try to test the hypothesis that, fursonas represent this “ideal” self for many furries. And, as an added bonus, we not only get to think about these ideal selves, but we get to actually spend time interacting with others as our ideal selves. In other words, if you’re a shy, quiet person, but would, ideally, be more outgoing and confident, spending time as an outgoing, confident version of yourself may actually change how you see yourself. Others will treat you as that outgoing, confident self, and, over time, you may realize that you’ve internalized, or become, that idealized version of you!
MR: In the past you’ve encountered furries who went through psychologically troubling times, and their therapist / counselor advised them to forget the furry fandom. How do you feel about that?
Nu: One of the most troubling things we were hearing from furries when we started doing one-on-one interviews was, as you said, that there were furries who weren’t getting the therapy that they needed because the therapist / counselor had no idea what a furry was. Furries, like anyone else, can suffer from psychological conditions like depression or anxiety disorders. But, where a non-furry would go in and receive help for the condition they’re suffering from, many furries would go into a psychologist’s office only to be told, after the first interview, that being a furry was the problem, not depression or anxiety. This is a real problem, because, for many furries, the fandom is a source of a lot of support – comfort, friendship, and even income in some cases. To be told that the fandom was the problem was not only heartbreaking, but incredibly frustrating for many furries, especially when the fandom was the only thing helping to keep them together. Thankfully, we’ve since published an article on this very subject which will hopefully reduce the problem, and give furries something they can show their therapist / counselor to explain that furry is, in most cases, probably not the problem.
MR: Can you say which article it is, where was it published?
Nu: Sure! The article is entitled “Clinical Interaction with Anthropomorphic Phenomenon: Notes for Health Professionals about Interacting with Clients Who Possess This Unusual Identity”, and it’s published in the journal ‘Health & Social Work’. The article’s abstract can be found here: (link⇒), and if you [the reader] want a full version of it, you can e-mail me ( cplante (at) iastate.edu ) to get a copy for yourself!
MR: The playful way in which we ascribe common traits to certain animal species is one of the appeals of animal-anthropomorphic culture. So, going to some data you’ve collected, for example, we find that fursonas who are a wolf or a dog, are believed to be loyal. Dragons are believed to be strong. Cats, lazy. Foxes, sly, intelligent. Otters, very much fun. And rabbits shy, but also, very much sex-driven! In what ways have you studied how this may relate to actual personal traits?
Nu: Aha! You’re thinking exactly like a scientist! Because that’s exactly one of the things we’ll be studying at Anthrocon this year! That’s actually what I wanted to study last year – to test whether certain personalities matched up with certain stereotypical fursona species traits (because we’ve been asked about that in the past – are all people who choose species X like this or that?) I wanted to test it, but the first step was to figure out what the stereotypes were in the first place. Now that we know what the stereotypes are, we can test to see whether people who identify as wolves or cats or foxes would actually use those terms to describe themselves! So, I’ll have an answer to that question in a few months!
MR: However, in the questionnaire, you have to ask in a way that’s not obvious to the reader so they don’t answer what they think they’re expected to answer.
Nu: Oh yeah – we take that into account. We have a lot of practice doing this.
MR: How much work is actually put in validating a questionnaire before printing?
Nu: Well, it typically takes us about two to three months, start to finish, to go from our initial design to printing for a convention. Usually we start off with a big brainstorming session a few months in advance. We talk about past projects and how we’d like to advance them, and we also talk about new projects or collaborators we want to bring on board. Then, we have to go out and see whether anyone’s measured what we’re interested in measuring – it saves us a lot of time to be able to use a previously-validated scale, rather than re-inventing the wheel. If not, we have to invent a new scale. Everyone on the team puts together a big list of questions they want to ask, and they send it to me. It’s my job to take this list of 300-500 questions and chop it down to less than 200 questions. This can take a surprising amount of time to do, and usually involves considering trade-offs – where can we get the most bang for our buck, since we only have so much space on the survey. Once that’s done and gets a final review from our team, it goes off to ethics, who has to review it, recommend changes to it, and finally approve it. It can take a surprising amount of time, and constructing good questions is an art – it’s not as easy as just throwing some words on a page!
MR: But if done right, it remains in the collective pool of useful human knowledge forever!
Nu: That’s the hope!
MR: You’ve delved a bit into therianthropy / otherkins. Furries are often misunderstood for therians; in media, or by people who are unfamiliar with the fandom. Therians are people who identify, intrinsically, as an animal; they believe they have the soul or spirit of a real animal, or identify strongly as one in some other way. The furry fandom isn’t therian, but a sizeable amount of furries are also therians, more so than in the general population. Would you say being therian (having a species identity different from one’s actual species) can be compared to being transgender (having a gender identity different from one’s sex)?
Nu: This is a surprisingly tough question to answer. In a way, my colleague Dr. Kathy Gerbasi made this analogy a few years go, and ruffled a few feathers for it. I would agree that you could use a transgender identity as an analogue for what therians describe their experience as being like, but I would definitely say that the phenomena are not the same thing – they likely have different underlying mechanisms, manifest in different ways, and I certainly don’t want to say that they’re the same thing – I imagine there are plenty of therians and transgender people alike who would take issue with the suggestion that these phenomena are the same. Interestingly, however, we do find that, compared to furries, therians are more likely to identify as transgender.
MR: This is one of the questions you ask in your surveys. Given the opportunity, through some mystical process, to become a real animal, would you choose to stop being human?
Nu: I’m rather fond of being human, to be honest! While I think cats are absolutely adorable, and I definitely admire their ability to be so content with a simple life of eating and napping in a sunbeam, I’m pretty happy as a person, and wouldn’t want to change it!
MR: In regards to sex and gender, why do you think the fandom is, compared to the general population, distinctly non-heterosexual and diverse? There’s more of everything: more homosexuals, more bisexuals, more gender bending, more transgender people, more polyamorous and open relationships, and more asexuals.
Nu: I think the fandom’s more diverse with regard to sexual orientation and gender identity for three reasons.
1) Historically, the fandom has many of its roots in such communities – San Francisco and Toronto are home to some of the first furry groups, both of which have a fairly prominent gay population.
2) The fandom is an open and accepting place, where people are invited to come as they are – something that’s particularly inviting, I would imagine, for people who belong to stigmatized minority groups.
3) The fandom provides a safe and comfortable place for people to explore aspects of themselves. It may be the case, for example, that rates of homosexuality would be much higher if the stigma were removed from it and people were given the opportunity / encouraged to explore their sexuality more openly. In that regard, the furry fandom may help people who are questioning, curious, or who have been thinking about these aspects of themselves to “try it on” and see how it fits.
MR: A graph by [adjective][species] shows furries being increasingly homosexual as they stay in the fandom. Without questioning their methodology, would you be surprised if that was the case?
Nu: Actually, I know the folks over at [a][s] quite well, and am well aware of that particular finding (though, I’ve lost track, at this point, of whether the hypothesis was first put forward by them or by myself!) This question is a fantastic example of the type of question that requires a longitudinal study to answer! Because, at the moment, with cross-sectional data, the only way to infer that homosexuality increases with time in the fandom is to ask people how long they’ve been in the fandom and to ask them about their sexual orientation. But there’s no way to know which caused which to happen. However, our longitudinal study will hopefully answer this exact question by looking at the same furries over time and seeing how their sexual orientation may change as they spend time in the fandom! I would certainly not be surprised to see that this is the case, as it’s been my hypothesis for a number of years now!
MR: Well it’s always been a popular thought here… Furry’s a field of turnips. Whoever comes straight turns into ‘fabulous’. (Turnips being a phallic reference.)
Nu: 
I’ve never heard that expression before!
MR: It’s probably a Spanish idiom.
MR: Where would you put yourself in the Kinsey scale? [A scale from 0, meaning exclusively heterosexual, to 6, meaning exclusively homosexual.]
Nu: I’d actually prefer to play that one close to the chest 
I’ve found, in the past, that people find it relatively hard to gauge where I stand in that regard, and I suppose I’d prefer to keep it that way
(Though you’re welcome to guess )
MR: I have no clue! I mean, you look in some way effeminate, but that’s not necessarily a homosexual trait. More and more people in the media appear effeminate, but also they’re straight. [“Being campy / mannered is not only an asset for the queer” – Mario Vaquerizo.] In a couple of decades I don’t think behaving effeminately and being actually gay will even be thought of as related.
Nu: It always surprises me to see that I give off mixed signals!
MR: You are also a brony, a fan of My Little Pony (MLP). There is some overlap between furry fandom and brony fandom, but you’ve found there isn’t a consensus on how to approach this. Different people feel differently about MLP fans. What can you say about this?
Nu: When it comes to bronies, the fandom’s pretty mixed in how they feel: about 1/3 of the fandom really hates them, 1/3 of the fandom likes them, and 1/3 of the fandom is ambivalent about them. In general, it’s the furries who are bronies (about 25% of furries self-identify as a brony) who tend to feel positively about bronies. As for the ones who are vehemently opposed to bronies, I suspect it stems, in part, from a belief that bronies are “invading the fandom” – that is, many artists have taken to drawing pony-themed art, and it was a major topic of conversation in the fandom for quite some time (though, it seems that in recent years it’s begun to decline in popularity). I would argue that these feelings are certainly not unique to bronies as a subculture within the furry fandom – similar observations can be found in peoples’ comments about Sonic the Hedgehog, Pokémon, and Disney movies like The Lion King in the past decade or two. And, with the popularity of Zootopia and the influx of furries it may yield, I imagine we’ll be having this same conversation about Zootopia in a year or two!
MR: Except Zootopia is awesome so everyone will love it just as much as I do!
Nu: It’s always amusing to me, that people who are fans of Pokémon or Sonic can say “ugh, bronies”, without realizing that, a decade earlier, furries were saying “ugh, Pokémon fans”. The times, they are a-changin’!
MR: You’ve recently discovered that furries are much more likely to be the older child of the family, and this is also my case. Do you dare speculate why this is so?
Nu: I wish I had a better answer for you – but, to be honest, that’s one of the weird quirks that we have absolutely no answer for! There’s been a little bit of research in psychology looking at birth order and the things that it predicts, but nothing, as far as I’m aware of, would predict the numbers that we found. Of course, it’s entirely possible that it was a statistical fluke, and in a future survey I definitely want to test it again, to see whether that was the case. However, if it’s not, and it really is the case that furries are far more likely to be the older sibling (as it is in my case as well), we’ll be scratching our heads to figure out why, that’s for sure! But that’s what makes science so much fun! Mysteries like this!
MR: May I hypothesize? The older child usually has more responsibility, or has a more rough terrain to go through in life than a younger child. So furry fandom might be a way to channel the desire for a world of fluffy bunnies and cutsie stuff.
Nu: It’s entirely possible! But here’s the problem with what’s called “armchair”, or “speculative” psychology. I could come up with an equally plausible alternative explanation: Research has shown that younger children are more likely to be “the artistic ones”, in rebellion of older children (who, because of stricter parents or more attention given to them when it was just them, may do better in school). So, because of this preference for “artistic” endeavours, they may be more drawn to the furry fandom!
Ultimately, as I always say, “it’s an empirical question” – they’re both plausible explanations, so we’d have to test it with a study to see which of our explanations is wrong, right, better, or worse! Let the data do the talking!
MR: Anyhow, your data shows the number one reason why people become furries is because of the internet. Doesn’t it prove this other hypothesis?
Nu: That picture is absolutely fantastic, and I think I may have to use it in an upcoming presentation. And yes, it would certainly provide evidence in support of that particular model!
MR: Amongst the things furries really like there’s sci-fi, videogames, cartoons, webcomics, and artwork. Amongst the things they’re more or less into there’s anime, MUCKs / role-playing, and tabletop gaming. A thing furries hate is sports. Why do you think furries don’t like local teams moving a ball to some place in a field, in order to score more points against rival teams?
Nu: I don’t think furries have an intrinsic hate of the idea of spherical projectiles on athletic fields, in and of itself! I think many furries are averse to sports for two reasons.
1) Sports represent an accepted, mainstream fandom. It’s socially acceptable for a person to be a sport fan, and there are many sport fans. In contrast, many furries are forced, because of stigma and other factors, to keep their interests relatively secret or, at very least, to not be as brazen and outgoing about them. It could certainly create some animosity toward sport fans, especially if you consider that many furries also identify as geeks, which are a relatively well-known counter-culture.
2) Many furries also report a history of having been bullied in their childhood / formative years. As such, they may develop a bit of dislike toward those who are more popular (e.g., preps, jocks), who may well have been the ones doing the bullying.
These explanations, as well as others, make more sense, especially when you consider how many furries have fursona species that like to chase balls (dogs, cats, etc…)!
MR: I recall a recording of a group of greymuzzles [including Fred Patten] discussing the furry fandom in a convention in the 90s. One of the things they talked about, was “Do you think furry fandom will keep its appeal if it becomes popular?” And they answered, no. They thought many people would leave the fandom if it becomes mainstream one day. We aren’t mainstream yet, but the fandom has grown a lot since then.
Nu: True! But we’re still a long way from “mainstream!” Although, it raises another interesting possibility: Groups don’t really “disintegrate”, especially not groups as cohesive as the furry fandom is. Instead, as they grow, they tend to “fragment”, so to speak. In fact, in a way, that’s how the furry fandom came into existence! As a group grows larger and more unwieldy, people begin to split off and specialize. As the science fiction fandom grew and grew, it allowed for more people interested in stories about “funny animals”, about planets of walking, talking cat-people together. Eventually, a critical mass of them grew and decided that there were enough of them to split off and have their own con. I suspect, if the fandom continues to grow, that sort of fragmentation and splitting off will happen.
It may well be the case that, as furry conventions and furry art websites continue to grow, more meaningful subgroups will form and split off from the group. Perhaps, in ten years, fursuiters will form their own community. Or perhaps there will be enough furry writers to form their own fandom specific to writing stories about furries, without any interest in fursuiting, music, or graphical arts. Or it may split based on content – perhaps furries interested in more feral style content will split off from furries who prefer more anthro content!
But it wouldn’t have to be a bad thing, of course! Not like a furry civil war or anything like that. More of a “specialization”. You can see something similar happen in regional furry groups. If there’s only, say, 10 furries in an area, they’ll all hang out together, despite likely having very different interests. Two of them may be artists, three of them may be gamers, one may be a writer, and so on. But, in a large regional group of, say, 300 furries, the furry writers will tend to congregate together, because they have more in common, and the furry gamers will do the same thing. They become their own subgroup within the larger, broader group.
MR: Another aspect you’ve studied within the fandom is the relationship between artists and commissioners. Artists believe commissioners are very demanding and self-entitled, meanwhile commissioners believe they’re patient and flexible. What would you say to each group?
Nu: I’ve been interested in this topic for a few years now, with the hope of being able to do exactly as you’re suggesting: to be able to give advice to both artists and commissioners.
To artists, I would recommend gently reminding them that for every bad customer or horrible review they get, there are dozens of people out there who love their work and will happily commission them. To recognize that they are biased to remember the bad ones, and to practice letting go of those bad commissioners. I’d also recommend to artists that they take time to work on pieces that they want to work on every so often, to make sure that they rejuvenate their passion for their craft, so it doesn’t become “just a job” for them.
As for commissioners, I’d recommend that they keep in mind that artists are people. They often have school or work outside of the commission work that they do, and they’re also people, just like anyone else, who get tired, need a break, stress out, and have personal problems that can interfere with their work.
I think both sides would also benefit from clear expectations that are agreed upon from the get-go, and from clear lines of communication – letting artists know what’s expected and that you’re able to pay on-time, and letting commissioners have an honest estimate regarding timelines and progress, and being honest about the ability to deliver on expectations. That would get rid of 80% of the problems that artists and commissioners frequently encounter.
MR: Are you aware of monetary issues that come up now and then? Like artists wanting the money upfront but then not delivering. Or someone wanting a refund when the money has been spent already. Or having a commission drawn but the artist not actually getting paid. I don’t think it happens very often but sometimes it does. Do you know anything about this?
Nu: Hmm, we’re only just getting started in our research on artists / commissioners, so, at the moment, no, I can’t say we have any data specifically about these sorts of issues. I am planning, sometime in the next year, to do an artists / commissioner specific survey though, which will hopefully address these very issues!
MR: You’ve found that, in comparison to other fandoms, furries are the least likely to tell others about their interest for animal-anthropomorphic culture, not unlike homosexuals “staying in the closet”. People are generally multifaceted, have different interests. While I may have an interest in bioethics, it’s not something I would talk about generally with furries, nor would I talk about furry with co-workers unless prompted. Though, in an ideal world, we’d like to talk to anyone about our passions in life. How important for our well-being is it to be open about furry?
Nu: We’ve actually published an article in the journal Leisure/Loisir a few years ago on this very topic, entitled “Deeper leisure involvement as a coping resource in a stigmatized leisure context”. The gist of the paper is that it’s not so important that furries be able to be outgoing about being furry so much as it’s important that furries not have to “keep it to themselves” or “hide it”. In other words, parading the fact that you’re a furry doesn’t really do much for your well-being one way or another. But being forced to conceal or hide the fact that you’re furry is actually really bad for you – because a similar thing has been found in gay people. When people have to hide their identity, it’s stressful – you have to be constantly vigilant about what you say to other people, and self-monitor to make sure you don’t accidentally “give it way” or “out yourself”. It also causes constant anxiety – what if your parents found out? Your partner? Your boss? That sort of stress is really bad for a person, especially when it’s chronic. Humans aren’t designed to be constantly under stress, and it takes a toll on your immune system and your physical health, in addition to your psychological well-being.
So, I wouldn’t say that furries should go to the rooftops and yell out that they’re a furry for all to hear. But yes, in general, it’s better for furries if they’re in a situation where they have people they can confide in and where they don’t have to constantly stress about what would happen if people found out they were a furry.
MR: There are many variables that can predict the level of well-being of a person: physical activity, sleep quality, healthy / non-healthy diet, smoking / non-smoking, employment, education… One of the best predictors of well-being you describe is having a social support network, friends, relationships. “Having people who are there for you when life gets hard, is one of the best predictors of well-being, and the fandom provides that for people.” How can the furry fandom make someone’s life more fulfilling?
Nu: Well, the furry fandom does provide a lot of people with a sense of identity and a sense of purpose – both things that can help make people’s lives more meaningful and fulfilling. When you feel like you’re part of something bigger than you, and when you feel like you’ve got a distinct identity, it’s good for self-esteem and overall life satisfaction. And, perhaps most important, the fandom provides people with that social support you mentioned. Social support is resilience – it’s resources that you can draw upon when life gets hard – whether it’s trying to cope with psychological trauma or loss, or simply with practical issues, like being short on rent or needing a place to sleep for a few days. The fandom provides people with that social support, which can, in some cases, even be life-saving. So, insofar as the fandom provides people with an identity, with a group to belong to, with a sense of meaning, and helps bolster their resilience against the struggles and hardships in life, it can absolutely improve the quality of life for furries.
MR: Taking into account everything you’ve learned from the furry fandom through the years, how would you describe it? How would you describe the furry community?
Nu: The fandom is a community, first and foremost. It’s more than just people sharing a common interest occupying the same spaces online or in-person. It’s people with a passion, with creativity and openness to new ideas sharing those ideas and openly seeking out new experiences and new friendships with others. And it’s genuine friendships and relationships that are formed through the fandom – people who may start to interact with one another because of a shared interest, but who form deep and meaningful bonds with one another over time. I think that’s the structure that underlies the fandom, when you strip away all the furry content. It’s relationships and community.
“Furries are people. They’re people who share an interest,
an interest that’s central to who they are and the group that they belong to.”
“This is what the media gets wrong about the furry fandom.
They show pictures like this, hundreds of fursuits.”
“That’s wrong, that’s not how furries look like. This is what furries look like.”
“Furries are people, hanging out with other furries.
And that’s what makes this fandom so special.
That’s why we love to study this fandom. Because of these relationships.”
– Nuka
MR: Picking up and finishing the interview, I only have two small questions. First, have you finally seen Zootopia? Or do I have to call the furry police?
Nu: I have seen Zootopia, and I absolutely adored it! Funny enough, my favorite scene, the scene I could watch over and over again, is when Judy is on the train, arriving in Zootopia for the very first time. The animation, the music, the sense of wonder it created. If the film doesn’t receive a ton of Academy Awards next year for that scene alone, it will be a travesty!
MR: Yeeeeeeey! Another convinced Zootopian!! 
MR: And, can we expect to see you in this year’s Eurofurence (August 2016)?
Nu: As much as I would absolutely love the chance to, I don’t think it’s in the cards this year – I’ve already added two new cons to my regular circulation – Further Confusion and Midwest Furfest. However… I’ve not ruled out the possibility of Eurofurence next year 
MR: Yeeey! Funded by the Government of Canada? For science?!
Nu: We’re currently not funded right now (we ran out); so we’re applying for more, at the moment. So, at the moment, I have to make it out to cons out of my own pocket! But I love what I do, and I don’t mind paying for my own science.
MR: It’s been a real pleasure talking to you Nuka. And it’s been a long interview. Thanks for bearing with me!
Nu: Oh, not a problem! Thank you for taking the time to be well-informed beforehand
MR: You can find Nuka at FurAffinity (Nuka-Kitty), and at the IARP website (link⇒). He remains approachable and is happy to assist in anything regarding his studies. Please consider taking part in his online surveys, or filling his questionnaires whenever you get the chance to see him at a convention.
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