[adjective][species]

Furry is an international phenomenon, and English is our predominant language. All our large conventions, from Anthrocon to Eurofurence to Japan Meeting of Furries to Russfurence, cater to English speakers. Attend any of these and you’ll find furries with English as their second or third or fourth language, communicating and participating in our lingua franca.

For a native English speaker, it’s easy to overlook non-English-speaking furry. But it exists, and as best we can tell, the next two biggest furry languages are Russian and Italian.

We are really pleased to be able to present here, for the first time, data from an Italian furry survey (Sondaggio Furry Italiano), that was open over 2012/13. The survey was entirely in Italian, and the results to date have only been published in Italian. Thanks to [a][s] contributor MrMandolino (who is Italian), we can present them here in English. (We’re also republishing the results, and a translation of this article, in Italian.)

It’s not easy to understand why Italian appears more common among furry than, say, French. Italy and France have a similar population (60 vs 66 million) and similar levels of English-speaking (ref).

The Furry Survey is published in English only, so we’re not able to estimate the proportion of other languages directly. However we can infer by looking at the difference between responses to the Furry Survey and activity online.

From the Furry Survey, we can see that less than 1% of the respondents live in Italy:

This data is from the 2013 Furry Survey, which had 7159 responses. The number of Italians was 23, which is 0.3%. This result is consistent with results from all surveys from 2009 to 2015.

Not surprisingly, the survey is dominated by furries from English-speaking countries.

We can guess at the prevalence of non-English languages within furry by looking at Wikifur metrics. Wikifur, like Wikipedia, supports pretty much any language you care to name:

The disparity between the number of Italians responding to the Furry Survey (in English) and the number of Wikifur pages (in Italian) suggests that there might be a significant Italian-speaking furry group. (We’re also looking at the other obviously large group, the Russians.)

This is just guesswork of course. The evidence is far from definitive that a significant Italian-speaking furry group exists, and while Mando is in touch with the Italian furs, the size of the community itself is extremely hard to judge.

The Sondaggio Furry Italiano is a long survey with 37 questions, and you can read them in full, in English, here. Highlights are given below.

The Sondaggio Italiano ran from late 2012 to early 2013, and received 103 responses. That’s not a lot, but it is enough to get a good feel for the demographics of the group. As with the Furry Survey, it’s impossible to poll people who don’t fill in the survey, so we can’t measure any inherent selection bias.

I’ve provided the (English) Furry Survey results from 2013 for comparison, which had 7159 responses.

Sex

The Sondaggio Italiano asks for sex, but not gender. The results suggest that the Italian group is (even) more male-dominated than the English-speaking group.

The Sondaggio Italiano was shared on online forums, a medium not always known for being welcoming towards women. It’s possible that this informs the sex breakdown. Other demographics show strong similarities with the English Furry Survey, as we shall see.

Age

The Italian- and English-speaking groups have a very similar age distribution.

The “jumpy” nature of the Italian distribution is due to the smaller sample size. It’s easy to see here why small sample sizes have larger uncertainty ranges: a small number of (say) 36 year-olds can create an outlier that looks (but isn’t) significant.

As a general rule we don’t publish uncertainty ranges when we present data here on [a][s]. We prefer to simply show raw data, to keep things simple (for a lay reader) and to avoid obscuring the data itself. For all these results, please keep in mind that the Italian data is subject to a lot more uncertainty than the English data.

Students

The proportion of students in furry, again, is similar between the two groups (statistically, these two results are said to be “identical”). Age is obviously a contributing factor here.

Sexual Orientation

Remarkably, the Italian and English furry groups show a very similar distribution of sexual orientation. This pattern—where straight, gay, and bisexual groups are in mostly equal proportion—is unusual.

This is a surprising result because there are significant differences in cultural attitudes towards homosexuality between the two groups. More than 80% of Italians are Catholic, and at the time of writing is the only major country in Western Europe that does not recognise either civil unions or equal marriage.

For the Italian-speaking group to show the same sexual orientation demographics as the English-speaking group suggests that there is something about furry that attracts such a group. It’s very difficult to draw any definitive conclusions about furry, because we are such a diverse and decentralized group. This result suggests that our relationship to sex and sexuality is important to understanding furry as a whole.

There are many, many more fascinating results to explore in the Sondaggio Furry Italiano results. You can read through the full set of results, which includes commentary and discussion (translated into English) here.

This article and the full Sondaggio Furry Italiano results are also available in Italian.

Guest article by Flip. Flip has been involved with furry and other fandoms since the late 1980s, running conventions since the mid 90s, and generally being an uberfan. He helps organize Furry Migration, which is held in Minneapolis.

This article is a companion and counterpoint to JM’s recent article, Ideas on Anti-Social Behaviour at Furry Events.

It’s odd when I find myself in such contrasting agreement and disagreement with an article at the same time. For the most part, I AGREE with JM’s article in his goals and even parts of his methodology. However, I do not believe the use of “nudge” dynamics is the best approach. Nudge assumes a sort of passive aggressive control from the staff. Control should not the final goal; responsibility of membership should be the final goal. I am going to suggest a reframing of the argument to better meet this goal.

Let me start with this: I’m a long time convention attendee, event organizer, contract negotiator, and alternative lifestyle aficionado. I have been going to and running conventions ranging from anime, gaming, science fiction, furry, and alternate lifestyles—including LGBT, BDSM, and polyamory—for over 25 years. I have seen the spectrum, from what works well to utter collapse. I speak from experience.

I’m not here to be an expert on how people should enjoy their convention. I’m not here to say what is a correct furry experience; that is subjective. I’m not even here to suggest what is culturally appropriate; I respect the importance of art and free expression too much to try to restrain it unnecessarily. What I can speak to is a culmination of rules and lessons learned on how hotels and events run here in the Midwest United States, and some of the contract law/assumptions that govern them. I understand that staff at a convention feel obliged to manage their membership so as not to disrupt these sometimes delicate contacts and legal requirements. I also sympathize with members of the furry fandom, which if being true to a furry aesthetic, are more concerned with expressing themselves than second guessing whether their actions are always “socially acceptable”.

This approach already seems to cause an issue with many furries. To some, I’m being too permissive, and actually encouraging “anti-social” behavior. To others, I’m being an “elite” fur because I’m defining do’s and don’ts. Both of these accusations assume that I am trying to assert control, which is not my interest at all. If you feel that being furry means you are free to do whatever you like, I would answer; you ARE free to do what you want. But I, as convention organizer and an agent of a legal non-profit, WILL not support or defend your actions. I will distance your behavior from what has been established by the convention. The trick is knowing not IF you allowed something, but WHERE and HOW you are allowed to do things.

Before we proceed, I want to give example of what CAN be achieved if executed properly. I can cite several examples of events at conventions that were far more risqué than the issues cited by JM which caused problems:

• “The 13th floor” of a local non furry convention, a responsible group established an area that was able to show a relatively full real life example of BDSM and polyamorous culture to those who wish to observe and even “sample” aspects of it. No significant legal or hotel issues were incurred, even though powers that be knew this event was occurring.
• At a recent furry convention, a showing of Fritz the Cat was challenged by both the night manager at the hotel and (some) attendees. Citations of contract law, legal law, and artistic obligation showed not only why we could do it, but why we should do it.

My point is that organizers should not focus on the specific behavior, but rather the context of the behavior.

So what are the cardinal terms to understand? The difference between public vs. private areas. The difference between convention staff, the hotel, and convention membership. Finally, the different between engagement and enforcement.

Let’s start with the first two terms. Conventions exist in that funny legal area where what is defined as public and what is defined as private is commonly blurred. I do not have space to show all the nuance here, but be aware what gets furs in trouble usually is doing things in a PUBLIC area instead of a PRIVATE area. Again, the issue is less the specific behavior but WHERE the behavior is conducted.

For example: you can be drunk, have sex, be nude, view adult material, etc, in a PRIVATE area, like a hotel room, but should be aware that such actions in a PUBLIC area (like a lobby), will be punished by the appropriate law. At a well run convention, the staff will know what areas are considered private and what areas are public. A convention attendee will often not know. But information like this is easy to access from staff: if in doubt, the membership must assume an area is PUBLIC unless they get clarification from authority.

With above being said, be aware of another often forgotten point: an illegal act performed in a “private” area is still illegal. (Yes, to acknowledge those libertarian legal scholars out there who love to cite castle laws, a private residence does have some discretion on enforcement law. But a hotel that rents a private space does not enjoy these protections.) Illegal drug use, underage sex or drinking, etc. is legally indefensible. A convention should not and will not defend you if there is a criminal act.

For example: there was a recent hoopla at a furry convention, where an incident that set of a safety alarm at a hotel required police attention. The convention was required, due to warrant and investigation, to disclose specific registration information. There was some outcry among furries that the convention should have withheld that information as “private”. Nope, sorry: an illegal act is an illegal act, and a fiduciary requirement of a group is to aid an investigation. Yes, organizers do not disclose full lists or other data outside of a such an investigation request, and instead disclose only what is legally required.

Next part is the relationship between staff, the hotel, and the membership. Put most simply, a convention is an event where a collective of members is renting a space for private use from a hotel, negotiated and managed by staff. Understand there IS, initially, an adversarial arrangement here. Ideally, the best conventions are where staff manage a partnership between the hotel and the membership, but that is usually the result of many years of trust and hard work, providing a consistent positive outcome and low drama events. Many furs forget that almost ANY negative impact to the hotel will possibly kill this arrangement and thereby potentially kill the convention. To a hotel, there is no “minor incident” unless they want it that way. They have the power, we don’t. They own the place, we don’t!

Any assertion along the lines of “they need our business” or “the convention can afford it” is simply wrong. Staff are there to best represent the interest of the membership for the convention, and request from the hotel the facilities necessary to make it happen. The only power is the power of the hotel, and legal authorities able to implement commerce and trespass law. Convention staff have very little authority.

This gets us to our last point: engagement vs enforcement. With a realistic understanding of how power flows, and who has final say on “anti-social” behavior, it seems easy to conclude that staff cannot enforce behavior. This statement is alien to most furry conventions, but is the basis of good relations for many conventions (including here in Minneapolis). Conventions do not run a security department, they run an operations department. The staff’s job is not to enforce rules, but to establish the areas of the convention, both private and public, to best serve their membership. They then “remind” the attendee where these areas are, and the rules established by hotel that govern them.

Ultimately, convention staff is there to mostly identify and inform, not enforce. Furry Migration in Minneapolis uses a “wandering host” model instead of a security model. This approach ultimately dictates policy, contract negotiation, and finally implementation.

Let me give this long example; some conventions have a “no drinking policy” or “no parties” policy to correct antisocial behavior. This is a mistake. To put it bluntly, this is about as responsible as an abstinence-and-no-education policy to curb teen pregnancy; it simply does not work and will drive truly antisocial drinking behavior below the ability to monitor. Instead, staff should establish rules and areas where drinking may occur. The rules should be concurrent with the hotel policy or local law enforcement that govern them.

During a convention, your wandering host can regularly go by to check ID’s, curtail public drunkenness, etc. If this is not happening, engagement and a rehearsed policy of escalation are essential:

• The host should identify the person(s) acting outside the rules, and remind them of the rules.
• The host should make it clear that they are not enforcing rules, but are obliged to report any future issues to the staff and ultimately the hotel. Usually that is enough. It also makes the staff look less like cops but rather the good friend who holds you back before you get involved in a fight they know you can’t win.
• Further escalation varies depending on belligerence of the person(s) in question. The key is to make them keenly aware that the rules of hotel are tantamount, and that staff will not defend them if they persist in violating the agreement with hotel.
• If the problematic person remains belligerent or irresponsible, your final recourse is to pull their badge and inform the hotel. This does two things. This highlights to the hotel that the organizers are self policing by identifying an individual membership violation of hotel agreement. And by pulling their badge, you are showing you do not agree or condone this behavior of said individual.
• The moment the fur in question is NOT part of the membership; the room block discount/room placing rules allowing them to stay in the hotel are no longer legally binding. The hotel is now free to enforce whatever legal and economic punishment they have at their disposal.
• In the end, the staff is not the bad guy (in the eyes of the convention membership) because they performed no enforcement function, just disclosure. The hotel may call actual law enforcement, knowing they have the support of their client, and knowing exactly what happened. They also know that responsible organizers reduce the risk of damage. This preserves the relationship between the hotel and the convention.
• The problematic fur may complain. But if an individual fur negotiated with a hotel on their own to host an independent room party, the same response would have happened. The only difference is that the individual would have no intermediary to remind them that hotel enforcement is much worse than a friendly nudge.

As a follow-up, this is why I have such an issue with ghosting. Ghosting is trespassing! A hotel normally would not tolerate a random person—who is not a guest—wandering their halls. The hotel also has power over all occupants of a room that includes a ghost. So if a room has five people in it, and one is ghosting, commerce law dictates that it IS legally possible for a hotel to charge for, or displace, the entire room. In this case, the convention has no real reason to defend the occupants of the room because, if they did, they would be highlighting to future hotel negotiations they intend to allow all sorts of “extra” non membership people not outlined in the contract. Furs who cannot afford the cost of registration and/or a room simply cannot attend.

This last critique I wish to address is all of this makes convention staff seem to have “too much” power because they are the monopolistic gatekeepers with the hotel. Any well-run convention or event is likely to be a volunteer organization and as such is always open to new staff. If you wish to be part of it, put in the work. If you want to be part of the show, then show up to the planning meetings. I will say this; my own experience has shown less than a 10% retention of convention volunteers specific to working with hotel because it is hard and thankless work. I have a rule that I use at local conventions: you want the “glamour and prestige” of this job, please learn how to replace me. I’m very happy this last year I finally got replaced as programming head at Furry Migration: now I’m back at the hotel, trying to find my new replacement.

I’m hoping this article does aid others in how they view and manage “anti-social” behavior. Back in the day, RPG’s, furry, homosexuality, etc were all considered anti-social – that hotels and other venues did not want to deal with. Over time, conventions showed they could be reliable and profitable clients. The issue is not always about behavior, but about how behavior is managed, and the relationship with the hotel in question. Convention staff and membership need to understand this balance if we are to go forward with larger, better, and maybe even more permissive events.

[Editor’s note: we first published Whiskey Sour in 2013, which included an introduction by the poet, Lunostophiles. Lu also curated the first [a][s] poetry collection, in 2015. I love Whiskey Sour. Read it, wherever you are, and be transported. ~~JM]

Whiskey Sour

We cup our claws,
Our talons,
Our nubby, rum-soaked fingers round flimsy cups
Thrust high in praise of the bacchanal;
Of deities borne through chants whispered into bottle caps,
And gods reincarnated with too-loud laughter.

And we, members of a growing cult
That malingers like a skulking formaldehyde dream;
The clan of eternal headaches,
Of moist and sloppy lip-locks in bathrooms,
A brotherhood we did not know we had joined–
All hidden behind locked hotel room doors
Dangling signs to ward away housekeeping just one more day.

The tingling fingers of siren cocktails draw shadows on our eyes,
Their clarion songs promising personality,
Conviviality,
New and absent friends cast in the fires of a molotov.

The party floors reek of high-proof happiness by Thursday’s end;
A massive, sharp-toothed plague that grips us
Like beef bourguignon with the red overflowing,
And in its powerful jaws
Forces from us a vomit of glee.

—–

In my naivete, my swollen days of Massachusetts autumn,
When life was a marbled haze upon my eyes,
New to the north, new to adulthood in its bleak daylight;
It is here I was first thrust headlong into the convention scene.

The smiles of the rogues,
The shade-beings,
Frothing like the head of a fresh-poured Guinness,
With arms outstretched as great bows with no arrows.

“You’re here!” they cried, they shouted!

“You’ve made it!”

“No more are you doomed to a life
Where what you know of us are pixel silhouettes,
Spectres and creations of fervent, bored imaginations
Illuminated to life upon LCD screens.
No more will you play the most dangerous game
With mouse cursor and hyperlink,
A man on wild safari for a beast no one has caught!”

The lobby was Kublai Khan’s pleasure dome,
Husky and dense with delights:
Shrieks of absences making hearts grow fonder
And the soft hum of happy chatter.
This was the soundtrack of a grin.

And this Morphean utopia,
All swathed in furs and memetic shirts,
Laid itself before me prostrate like a lover waiting.
And somehow, despite having never charted these waters,
I spread my fingers wide, the rays of a distant star
Upon the china white body of this vast world made flesh,
Feeling blind corners and sharp elevation changes.

And in my mind, this monolithic and precise relief
Fit jigsaw-snug into the jagged-edged,
Razor-toothed pockets of the conspace–
Just like I knew it would.

—–

The size of the party means you’re having more fun!
Kiss the elbow of the man next to you
(Though you aimed for his lips
And your trajectory erred),
Caress the obliques of a stranger–
Any stranger!–
They know you in spirit.

We pack ourselves tighter into a four-person cubicle,
Sardines with no oil or water,
Just marinating for the main course.

We keep laughing, we writhe our bodies;
We roll our heads, unattached, through the marathon hallways,
Down the stairwells and across the pool chairs,
Colossal sound extricating itself from our maws thrown wide with venom;
Venom and veracity.

Keep laughing, you fools! This is of import!–
Don’t let’s talk, don’t let’s converse.
Imbibe, my comrades.

Imbibe!

—–

Acquaintences met, acquaintences made,
And now a believer in the throes of transubstantiation
I rose from the fairgrounds,
Making careful, tiptoe steps into the elevator
As if wary of nightengale floors.

Rising, rising! like the wind through a flue,
Then left in the dim hallway of an upper floor;
A babe in the clasp of some darkened bosom.

A friendly face?
There, past the ionic columns of pizza boxes,
The tenuous styrofoam skycrapers
And sunken pagodas erected in the conquest of General Tso;
There, through the chalky dark mist, I wandered,
Unaware that this was the land of the forgotten;
This was the desert Moses lost himself in for forty years,
Or a world Euclid would have wept at the sight of.

Hand-scrawled signs on the closed doors,
Effegies of animal-men in cartoon hysterics,
Voiced by a backmask reveille–
Were they speaking?
No, they were barking; mad creatures
All scraping claws on cage bars,
Aching for an exit of this perverted zoo.

A smile across the hall–
My brethren!
They ushered me from the dark and dreary path
And into their light-filled embraces,
All hearth and home.

On the desk, a lanyard graveyard,
Piles of forgeries laid waste in private
To mingle in a flat-ironed spiderweb;
And looming over us all was the altar,
The godless instrument for impassioned debauchery;
A boozy glass harmonica.

I was handed a cup.

In downcast gaze, I saw myself in the milky mirror,
An endless pit just below the surface film.
Its jaws gaped, a chasm, an abyss,
A lion awaiting the head of its master
(And I with no whip or chair).
The drink plumed personality from its depths,
Swarthy and succulent,
Sugar and spice…
…And the hooch was quite nice.

As if I had exchanged lives with a desperate man
Lost in the Sahara, carrying a dry canteen,
Upon seeing the liquid I erupted with need
And the drink disappeared in a fit of magic.
The cup hung as a red flag upon my body,
Too obvious to notice,
Waving defeat in the cold October air.

My thoughts grew hairline fractures, fit to burst at the seams;
The cup was refilled;
And I’d’ve rather rinsed than repeated
But is it not unkind to turn down one’s host?
The steps to a new and baffling dance snuck on through,
A sway and a hop I had hidden,
Shoved under blankets;
Sandwiched between floorboards.

I guzzled, I glutted,
I quaffed and I chugged and I drank.

—–

Deaddog, deaddog,
Come out to play.
The boy’s in the meadow,
The girl’s in the hay.

The boy’s at the toilet,
The girl’s at the sink.
Deaddog, deaddog!
Just one more drink?

—–

A name, a curse,
Scratched, tattooed in dismantled English,
Tight gypsy glyphs in thick-line Sharpie on cheap red plastic
As if this chalice of consumption,
This cup of infinite holding was mine forever.

But it’s never quite ours forever, though;
Never just quite.
When all the rum, all the gin, all the mixers run dry
And down to the floor we descend in a daze;
When corpses of bottles are strewn on the desktops,
Under beds,
Across suitcases unpacked;
When we have constructed mass graves and catacombs to coquetting
which overflow the trash bins;
Tremendous and terrific mountains to excess
Unfit for us to scale–
More appropriate, as knackered as it is,
To set it aflame like a phantasmagoric funeral pyre,
And let acrid smoke curl through the room and asphyxiates us.

When this death waltz has begun,
We stare from the valley of drunken stupor,
Cross-eyed and infantile,
And we gurgle out our sorrows, intoning our distates,
And the once-bright laughter falls pallid and flat;
Fetal fallen angels neck-deep in Hell’s detritus.

It is possible to reverse transubstantiation–
In those moments, it is possible to eat your own halo.

The spark of newness rubs away quick,
Like the silver ink on a fresh credit card.
Deep in the cavities of the room parties,
Shadowed under the awnings and eaves of hedonism
(May Dionysus his name be praised into the porcelain shrines!),
And the towering she-wolves we suckle from–
Romulus and Remus ad infinitum–
Inside these wounds we lose the virgin edges,
We claw our way into the light of day
And hiss at the sun.

I do not want to become a parody of intelligence.
I do not want this to be our brave new world
Filled with the vapor trails left by regret,
Bitterness smothered in cold flame.
I will not be baptized into the Church of the Dead Soldier:
Not by mother vodka.
Not by father whiskey.

Yet still, I raise a toast–
In a smaller, finer glass–
To friendships forged in the fandom’s smithy;
A fandom sought out by outliers and outcasts–
Those without names and those with too many.
I will laugh a real laugh,
A room-filling sound that is never too loud,
Fringed with the fragile lace of mirth.

And high above us, the dirty angels of the rooms
Pray to their patron saints to let them see the afternoon.

For unlike we folk awake and alive,
They have not learned how to hide their halo
Just behind their backs–
Just out of reach from the cold and clammy hands
That still crush the plastic party cups into cadavers.

No, they have no place for their goodness,
And hide their glow in the bottoms of cocktails;
Just around the far side of the martini olives
That gaze upon them and despair.

And in that moment,
With the very eyes of their consumption cast outward?
Just smile back, take a sip,
And make it the last.

At least for the night.

This is the final of three days of animal-themed poetry by Renee Carter Hall. Renee is curating the 2016 [adjective][species] Poetry Collection, which is open for submissions until 22 April.

The Unicorn at the Zoo

They put it among trees and rose bushes,
ringed a dry moat with an iron fence.
They’re still not sure if it’s
male or female; the ultrasound
goes to static and freezes every time.
They tried to test its blood,
but the silver serum in the tube
swirled and shimmered into nothing.
They held a contest to name it anyway,
and a third-grader won with Moonflower.
Tourists gather at its enclosure with
strollers and cameras,
whinny at it like a horse,
hold their children up to see.
In their snapshots, it is only
a vague white blur, a bit
of pearly horn here, a hint
of cloven hoof there.
The gift shop has no postcards of it,
but the plush horned ponies sell out every week.
The keepers aren’t sure what it eats.
Some say the flowers, but they’re untouched.
Some say water, some say air.
Some say love, but they’re laughed at
by people who feel guilty for it afterward.
The keepers hold somber meetings
with scholars and art historians.
Every day they worry it seems a bit thinner,
its coat a touch paler, more translucent.
The words on the sign at its enclosure
are starting to fade.
Sometimes the zoo director stands
before it in his three-piece suit,
slow tears tracing the lines of his face.
Some say he’s only thinking about
the money he might lose.
Others aren’t so sure.

Pulse

The world
drifts.
Bear sleeps
beneath snow

in the deep dreaming,
the warm dark
of fur and tooth.
Within,

spring’s cubs
slumber, lulled
by the slow rush
of blood and breath.

Outside, the cold
a lullaby;
inside, her heartbeat
a promise.

(Readers can find more of my poetry, on various subjects, at http://www.reneecarterhall.com/poetry.html)

This is the second of three days of animal-themed poetry by Renee Carter Hall. Renee is curating the 2016 [adjective][species] Poetry Collection, which is open for submissions until 22 April.

Comanche

I had seen enough of battle.
Again and again I had carried the man into the fighting,
into the storm men make that nothing survives.
Now the thunder was gone, and their bodies
lay scattered, pale and still, across the field.
Only the river moved.

I went toward it–careful,
so careful, where I put my hooves.
At last I stood by the water, too exhausted
even to swish the flies from my wounds.
I felt nothing.
I was ready to die; I was hoping
it might be as if I were a foal again,
before I knew bit and bridle,
before I carried any weight.

Then they found me.
And they called me brave.

They made me remember.
Every parade, every ceremony took me back,
made my scars burn like half-healed wounds.
When they cheered me, I heard only
the cries of the fallen.

They gave me the best of everything,
made me the pet of the cavalry,
the mascot of the fort, the symbol
of courage and honor in defeat–
never thinking that all I wanted

was sunlight on my mane,
a mare to groom with gentle teeth,
the scent of grass instead of fear and gunpowder,
and the peace of that slow, cool river
to wash all the blood away.

February 1: Groundhog Goes to the FoodMart

Mrs. Fox, pushing her cart
in her best Sunday dress, string of pearls
at her red throat, reminds him
of the tenderness of spring chickens,
gives him a smile, white and sharp.

The Rabbit family crowds the cereal aisle.
As he chooses a plain cylinder of oatmeal,
Mother Rabbit says hello, steers the small talk
toward the petunias she’s planning
to brighten up the burrow,
the rows of cabbages and carrots
Father’s mapping out for the field.
The kits tug on Groundhog’s overalls, eyes bright,
whispering to him, one more snow,
one more afternoon of sledding, one more fort,
one more snowbunny with mittens for ears.

Sleepy-eyed Bear shuffles in, only nods
when anyone speaks, gets in line
with a quart of milk and a canned ham.
His bleary gaze meets Groundhog’s,
and he adds a can of coffee, economy size.

Groundhog waits in line, stares at the tabloids
while the chattering squirrel cracks gum
and rings up the shoppers ahead.
He feels their eyes on him, all watching as if
he could melt the gray slush outside with a glance,
could give them warmth and new life on a whim.

Even in this harsh fluorescent light,
he will not look at his feet.

(Readers can find more of my poetry, on various subjects, at http://www.reneecarterhall.com/poetry.html)

This is the first of three days of animal-themed poetry by Renee Carter Hall. Renee is curating the 2016 [adjective][species] Poetry Collection, which is open for submissions until 22 April.

Panthera tigris

Your stripes on my skin are foolish,
garish colors on a flattened face–
you were never meant to walk on two legs,
to sacrifice your rolling-smoke stride
for my half-falling, unbalanced gait.

I will not flatter myself to be
even your poor imitation,
your ridiculous reflection,
no matter how much I long for your form.

I will borrow your fire instead,
the deep, fierce light of your eyes.
I will learn how to crouch and wait
and trust that the right moment will come.

I will learn to hunt
what I need to survive.

Grizzly

How he rested
his massive head on the log —
the easy curve of his claws —

I have never seen anything
so casually powerful
yet so open to endearment,
so likeable in the eyes,
no feline “I’m beyond you” gaze
that lions and jaguars cherish —

just bear,
a thousand pounds of bear,
all weight at rest —
and it’s enough.

Lord Tiger’s Answer

The question, he said, is not
why some of my kind
prey upon man.
It is why all of us do not.
Your hide is thin, your flesh
is soft, you are blind as
wet cubs, and the wind
says nothing to you.
Men stumble like chital fawns
through this jungle,
bleating their complaints
for any hunter to hear.
Why, then? Not pity:
We feast on the young,
the unsteady, the trembling;
they are as gifts to the hungry.
It is not, even, the weapons you carry
that crack the sky with their fire.
No.
It is your very strangeness
that closes our jaws–
of this earth, but not walking in it,
you carry the movement of worlds
in your stride, carry the heavens
in your gaze, carry so many swirling
confusions in your heads,
where we are bone and teeth and claws.
Easy meat, oh yes,
but it sits sour in our bellies,
fouls our breath,
and muddies our minds.

(Readers can find more of my poetry, on various subjects, at http://www.reneecarterhall.com/poetry.html)

My Pony, by Liam Rector follows Shining River’s article about cowboy poetry yesterday. It is from Cowboy Poetry Matters, From Abilene to the Mainstream, Contemporary Cowboy Writing, edited by Robert McDowell, Story Line Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2000.

 

My Pony

Coming back to you, my pony, whom I had to leave
To make money, I proffer up the dire smidgen,
The torn thing I managed to lug back with me,

Along with the big bucks: World is made of bologna.
Like the pressed woods of my ascetic bookcase,
Like the traffic jam full of air conditioning

And grieving music, world is pressed together
As if my impossibility, my pony, as by poetry…
How long I have loved thee to see you now grown old

Though still able—under all this weight—
To put your foot to the far off, to the going…
Carry me now, my pony. Carry us to where we buried

Those Clydesdales who once in soggy spring,
In early morning, plowed those furrows which fed us
Before I could no longer afford the farm.

I think we laid them down, me scrounging money
For the backhoe, over there in the west field.
I think we should go over now to the west field…

And the cats who used to run with us back
In the olde days: Sartre, Huck, and the others—
None lived to see fourteen, though all stayed relatively

Long for cat lives—blessings to them now, my pony ;
Blessings to them who used to run and sit with us!
And will I ever get to hold my father as he dies

And will he release me then from the fear of dying?
Not likely. Probably not, my pony.
Probably much more mulling through this membrane

Which passes so quickly, which stuns me and makes me
Wonder how much longer we’ve both got here to ride…
Ride on while we’re here, my pony, and next spring

I’l bring Virginia, whom I’ve left back in the city.
I’ll bring her to you for her safekeeping.
She needs the hurl and arc these fields have put in us,

Out looking: she needs the kind of joking past grieving
We’ve come to together, thrown through the pressed world
Where I went off to earn being hers and yours, your Liam.

In the United States,
in Canada and Mexico,
Argentina, and Australia,
out beyond the screaming cities,
beyond electric lights that have stolen your night sky,
there is our other country.

From the people and the land
and the animals,
there comes a clear voice
telling stories of courage and fear,
success and great loss,
the man and the horse,
the cattle and the coyote,
the present and the past.

Gather ’round,
listen in,
and cowboy poetry
will soon begin.

Cowboy poetry is a unique category of poetry which comes from the life and culture of the diverse people who work and live primarily in the environment of the cattle industry of a handful of nations. Theirs is a lifestyle created by that industry and by the land on which they live and work. Much cowboy poetry is about animals—their behavior, their problems, their strength and beauty, and how cowboys and ranching family members interact with them. They tell stories of animals both real and imagined.

Although many cowboy poems may be found in books, the real strength of cowboy poetry is found in the performance of it—the recitations, and the music that sometimes accompanies it. Sometimes the poetry is shared between just a few individuals when the work of the day is done, and sometimes it is shared with the world, in books, on television and online. Cowboy poetry comes from the minds of individuals, not from the urban American entertainment industry. A few poets have become prominent in the cowboy poetry community and have made some relatively small financial benefit from their writing and performance. For the great majority, their participation is done for the love of the art. In that way, cowboy poets and their fans are like the furry community. And like the members of the furry community, cowfolk have their own cons which are known simply as cowboy poetry gatherings.

In 1985 the first cowboy poetry gathering was organized by western American folklore researcher and author Hal Cannon. With the help of many others around the west, he held the gathering in Elko, Nevada, and the first one drew a “few hundred” people. Since then it has increased to attendance numbers around 8,000, with events spread out over several locations in Elko over the span of the entire last week in January every year. Other cowboy poetry gatherings have been organized in many other states, along with smaller events, commonly held during the last week in April, officially designated as Cowboy Poetry Week. The month of April is known in the literary community as National Poetry Month.

Just like furry, there is some history behind today’s cowboy poetry.

Craig Miller, in his essay “Nature and Cowboy Poetry” contained in the book Cowboy Poets and Cowboy Poetry, University of Illinois Press, 2000, observes that historically there are three main categories of cowboy poetry. The early days, he names “The Old Paradigm: Nature Equals Chaos, Civilization Equals Order.” This beginning of cowboy poetry began after the American Civil War, primarily in the 1870s before the railroads and telegraph came to western America. Miller describes the cowboy poetry of this time thus:

Poems of this period are characterized by enormity of landscape, natural disasters that test individuals and groups, and a correlation between nature and the devil. […] few collections of cowboy poetry (from that time, ed.) exist without reference to that dreaded occupational hazard, the stampede […] In these poems, herds of domestic cattle represent raw energy ready to explode at the slightest spark.

 The second historic category that Miller introduces is “A New Paradigm: Nostalgia Ushers in a Growing Respect for Nature.” As the West became settled in the late 1800s into the early 1900s, lands were extensively fenced, and railroads and telegraphs connected distant cities and towns, the cowboy’s way of life began to change, to become a little restricted, less free. He offers this example from an important early collection of cowboy poetry and songs : Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, (1910) John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, Macmilllan, publisher, 1986. In this excerpt from “The Last Longhorn“—which is attributed to frontier judge R.W. Hall of Amarillo, Texas—a nostalgic, talking longhorn steer describes the passing of the Old West and the end of the old cowboy life:

“I remember back in the seventies,
Full many summers past,
There was grass and water plenty,
But it was too good to last.
I little dreamed what would happen
Some twenty summers hence,
When the nester came with his wife, his kids,
His dogs, and his barbed-wire fence.”

Miller’s final time period he names “The Old Paradigm Inverted: The Chaos of Civilization Becomes the Major Threat to the Environment and to Cowboy Culture.” The enormous increase in population in the United States in the twentieth century brought good and bad results for those in the cattle ranching life. Demand for beef kept the cowboy’s work necessary and relevant despite increasing mechanization of food production. Higher paying jobs in cities pulled young people away from the ranching life and culture. Laws and regulations regarding land use began to restrict the rangelands. The entertainment industry and published literature created unrealistic mythologies and stereotypes of the cowboy and the culture. In the second half of the twentieth century cowboy poetry began to include themes of environment destruction, foreign wars, and modern ideas of the value and relevance of wild animals.

The Animals in Cowboy Poetry

Horses have played an important role in human civilization from the ancient empires of Egypt up to modern nations. Today in North America, Europe, South America, Asia, and Australia, the mounted rider still is important to the managing of domestic animal herds. Horses are the subject of many cowboy poems. They are both the blessing and the curse to the cowboy. Though it is less common today, in the past cowboys often had to break wild horses for the cowboys to use as working horses. They could be unpredictably wild and violent, as we read in this excerpt from Ham Hamilton’s “Rough Rider” from One Cowboy’s Roundup, Prairie Poetry and Proverbs, Frontier Publishing,1995:

A horse’s name usually told you a bunch
About how people viewed his demeaner.
“Cyclone” and “Storm” and “Tornado”
Were in the class with old “Steamer”.

 But I watched close for the subtle names
Of “Lady”, “Sweetheart”, “Beauty”, and sorts.
Some of those gals could rattle your bones
And shake you right out of your shorts.

The cowboy’s horse is his most important tool, and partner, in his work. Good horses respond well to the rider’s directions and they often actually know what moves are needed in certain situations. They may not be pretty but they get the job done, as Wallace McRae writes in “Red Pup, Bonine, and Owl” Cowboy Curmudgeon and Other Poems, Gibbs-Smith Publisher, 1992:

I go to some horse shows every year,
And usually come home feeling foul,
And slightly ashamed of my stay-at-home mounts:
Red Pup, Bonine, and Owl.

 The arena horses are shining and proud.
Their ears are always alert.
While Red Pup, Justin, Bailey, and Snip
Are slovens, in sweat and in dirt…

…But could the show horses keep up with my boys,
Doing their chores on the ranch?
Could they make the circle, work herd, drag the calves?
Would an honest day’s work make them blanch?

 …So Hail! to the Red Pups, the Bonines, and Owls.
Hail! to the equine wage slave.
In this beholder’s eyes you’re beauties.
You never took as much as you gave.

In the cowboy’s world, loss and death is never far away, and there are many ways that a cowboy or his horse can lose their lives, or simply be parted from one another, possibly never to see each other again. Whether one is a man or woman in the cattle industry, one learns at an early age to stuff down and rationalize away natural feelings of tenderness and grief toward animals because such emotions can interfere in the rough work that is the livestock industry. This is a strong cultural tradition that continues from long ago. Some contemporary cowboy poems speak to the feelings of loss that can come upon a man or woman when their relationship with a special horse is disrupted. Here, a few excerpts from Liam Rector’s “My Pony”, from Cowboy Poetry Matters, From Abilene to the Mainstream, Contemporary Cowboy Writing, Story Line Press, 2000:

Coming back to you, my pony, whom I had to leave
To make money, I proffer up the dire smidgen,
The torn thing I managed to lug back with me,

 …How long I have loved thee to see you now grown old
Though still able—under all this weight—
To put your foot to the far off, to the going…

 …Ride on while we’re here, my pony, and next spring

 I’ll bring Virginia, whom I’ve left back in the city.
I’ll bring her to you for her safekeeping.
She needs the hurl and arc these fields have put in us,

Out looking : she needs the kind of joking past grieving
We’ve come to together, thrown through the pressed world
Where I went off to earn being hers and yours, your Liam.

Cattle have hard lives, and in cowboy poetry they are the source of curses, despair, and comedy. Out on the rangelands, they are independent, ornery, and vulnerable. Just getting them started in life can be an epic struggle. Cowboy poet Baxter Black has become a living legend in his community, particularly for his humorous poetry. Here are some excerpts from his “Fetal Eye View” from Croutons on a Cowpie, Volume II, Cowboy Poetry by Baxter Black, Coyote Cowboy Company, 1992. A calf being born is speaking to the humans assisting in his birth:

“Say, anybody got a light? It sure is dark in here
     and tighter’n the skin on Polish sausage.
For nine long months I’ve trusted Mom but now she’s pulled the plug!
     A pure and simple case of double crossage!

 I’m not sure what I really am or even what I’m for?
     To breed? Or do they plan to milluk us?
I’ve checked myself the best I could . . . a bull calf’s what I think,
     but, heck, that might be my umbilicus!

 . . .Git out the way! I’m bailin’ out! Too bad we met like this
     ‘Cause you might be alright, at least I think . .
And to show there’s no hard feelin’s, belly up here to the bag
   and I’ll buy you and all yer friends a drink!

Domestic cats don’t get invited on cattle drives, as you may have suspected. They hang around barns and ranch houses, keeping the rodent population in check, but there are a few poems that include them, though not as the main subjects. In my research I have found them in Vess Quinlan’s “The Barn Cats”, Linda M. Hasselstrom’s “What the Falcon Said”, and Liam Rector’s “My Pony”.

Dogs are necessary companions to the cowboy. They are not pets, and they too have rough lives. Cowboy poet Ed Brown, in his “Cowdogs”, in New Cowboy Poetry, A Contemporary Gathering, Gibbs-Smith Publisher,1990, wrote:

Now some cowdogs have pedigrees
           And other claims to fame.
But here a cowdog gets two things:
         A whipping and a name.

And we don’t just give them a name
         From a book upon the shelves.
We use them, and if they stay around,
         We let them name themselves. . .

…Backhoe fills the yard with holes;
      Nixon covers them up;
Welfare hasn’t done a thing
       Since he was just a pup.

Buzzard eats the darndest things;
       Leppie’s mother never claimed him.
If we had a dog that could work cows
       We wouldn’t know what to name him.

Wild predators were once common enemies of the cowboy and the herds but the wolf, bear, cougar, and coyote were drastically reduced in number in North America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Naturally they do appear as subjects of cowboy poetry. Bears get mentioned in Ham Hamilton’s “Bear” and here in Jesse Smith’s “Message in the Wind” from New Cowboy Poetry, A Contemporary Gathering, Gibbs-Smith Publisher, 1990

. . . Yer old pony’s eyes are a-lookin’,
       his ears workin’ forward and back.
All of a sudden you feel his hide tighten,
     And a little hump come into his back. . . 

. . .But you know yer old hoss ain’t a-lying,
     He’s as good’ne as you’ll ever find.
And you know that old pony’s tryin’
     To warn ya ’bout somethin’ in time.

Well, ya look real hard where he’s lookin’,
     His eyes are plum fixed in a stare,
Then ya see what he’s seein’,
     A cub and an old mama bear.. .

 A cougar, felis concolor, makes an appearance in Virginia Bennett’s “The Lion”, and a deer in Floyd A. Jenson’s “The Day I Roped a Deer”, and a falcon in Linda Hasselstrom’s “What the Falcon Said”. Accounts of wolves are uncommon in cowboy poetry but the coyote is popular. An old poem attributed to Robert Fletcher is “The Belled Coyote”, telling a likely fictional story about catching a coyote in a trap and tying a small bell around his neck and letting him go. The cowboy later takes pity on the coyote because the bell is always warning away the coyote’s prey, and so he accurately shoots the bell off the collar.

Four contemporary poems, Buck Ramsey’s “Songdog”, Wallace McRae’s “The Coyote”, Eric Sprado’s “Our Range”, and Linda Hussa’s “Under the Hunter Moon” bring in more modern ideas about the relationship of humans and coyotes. The McRae and Sprado poems are considerations of how humans and coyotes share the land. Hussa’s “Under the Hunter Moon” tells of how she must kill a coyote who has attacked a flock of sheep. Ramsey’s “Songdog” found in Cowboy Poetry Matters, From Abilene to the Mainstream, Contemporary Cowboy Writing, Story Line Press, 2000 is more friendly to the coyote:

When young I saw a coyote spring in air
And arc and tumble in a backward flip,
Then chase his tail and wallow in his joy,
Exalting with his private yap and yip.

 Caught up, I sprang from hiding to my horse
And somersaulted backward to the ground,
Then rolled and wallowed in the flow’rs and grass
And mocked the private rapture of his sound.

There is much more to learn about cowboy poetry than the small fragments I have shared with you here. There is much more history behind modern cowboy poetry, and forms of cowboy poetry can be found in several other nations. In the month of April in 2015 I posted a series of essay excerpts by prominent authors, reports of two cowboy poetry events which I attended, and twenty-four poems with animal themes in my DreamWidth journal which are available for you to read beginning with this post: http://shining-river.dreamwidth.org/19085.html.

Included among those posts is a list of books that I have referenced in this essay, and several websites. Very soon I will post approximately twenty more cowboy poems. For those of you living in the United States, Canada, and even Australia, you may find live cowboy poetry (or bush poetry, if you are in Australia) events in many states/provinces, simply by an online search.

The cowboy community and the furry community have some significant differences and, most likely, little in common. The majority of us have only seen the cowboy’s world through the fiction and fantasy of popular, mass-produced entertainment. It requires some sincere effort to look beyond that. If you do so, because this is poetry, a language form expressive of emotion, you may find something in cowboy poetry that appeals to you in your deep emotional core, as this writer has found.

Look,
there is a canyon,
a grand canyon,
an unbridgeable canyon between
those cowboys
and those animals.

But we can see
and they can see
the stars in the constellations,
those man and animal line figures,
the star-stippled spirits
of us all.

 

 

 

 

 

Click here for our interactive visualization showing the relationship between furry gender and age.

Visualization by Ruxley. Species and age data taken from the 2015 Furry Survey. click through for the interactive version.

Renee Carter Hall (“Poetigress”) 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.

I’m honored to have been asked to curate the [adjective][species] poetry collection for 2016! Based on last year’s feature and on the recent release of the furry poetry anthology Civilized Beasts, I know there are lots of great poets in the fandom working in a wide variety of styles and voices, so I’m looking forward to seeing what comes my way.

For this year’s feature, I’m narrowing the focus just a bit and looking for submissions relating to animals and spirituality. I’m defining both “animals” and “spirituality” pretty loosely, so this can involve anthropomorphic animals, the furry fandom, therian/Otherkin, and any sort of belief system—or lack of belief—where animals play some role. It doesn’t have to be organized or established religion, although that’s certainly welcome too. Really, the only thing I’m not looking for is work that demeans any particular faith or belief system. What I want, ideally, is celebration, exploration, and introspection, not debate, proselytizing, or anything obviously written for shock value alone.

The fine print on what to send:

 

• Length, form, style: Totally open. Send me free verse, formal verse, whatever you like. If you’re using an obscure form that I might not be familiar with, let me know what it is so I can understand the full effect.
• Submissions may be published or unpublished. If a poem has appeared previously in a print or online publication, please let me know where, so we can give proper credit. (If it’s only been posted to FurAffinity, SoFurry, your personal blog, etc., there’s no need to note that.)
• Submissions don’t have to be new. You can write something new for this call, or if you have something you wrote years ago that fits, send it along.
• If in doubt, send it. Sometimes we don’t know what we’re looking for until we see it, and the worst we can say is “no thanks.” So if you’re on the fence as to whether your work might suit, send it and let’s see.
• You retain all ownership and rights to your poetry. [adjective][species] simply licenses your work for posting on the site. If you need your work taken down at any time, simply let us know. All posts are made under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 license, unless you specify otherwise.

How to submit:

• Send 1-6 poems, either in the body of the email or attached as a Word document, to:
  [email protected]
  no later than April 22.
• Be sure to include what name you want your work published under (real name, pen name, furry name, whatever works for you), and if you like, you can also include a link where readers can find more of your work.
• Everyone will get a yes or no response, but I’m afraid I can’t offer feedback or critique on submissions.

I’d like to draw from as many perspectives as possible, so if you can help spread the word about this call to other poets and poetry communities, please do! Any questions, post a comment here or send them to the email listed above.

This article is an updated version of a piece published on [adjective][species] in March 2012.

Animal Farm is George Orwell’s 1945 classic novel.

Orwell is considered to be one of the great authors and Animal Farm, along with Nineteen Eighty-Four, is considered to be one of his masterpieces. Animal Farm follows the story of anthropomorphic animals that overthrow their human farmer master and run the farm on their own terms.

I re-read Animal Farm with the idea that I would review it for [adjective][species]. I was planning to conclude that it’s a great book, and a great furry book, that all furries should read it, and it’s an easy book to recommend to the [adjective][species] Furry Canon.

I have re-read Animal Farm, but I’m not recommending to the Furry Canon. Read something else.

I simply don’t think that Animal Farm is a furry book. Which got me thinking about what constitutes a furry book.

I’ll try to define what a furry book is later, but let’s look at Animal Farm first. It has many qualities that might make it attractive to a furry audience:

• Animal Farm is not complex or difficult to read. Its full title is “Animal Farm: A Fairy Story“, and it’s written in a very deliberate children’s storybook style. The writing is magical in its clarity, akin to Dr Seuss, J.K. Rowling or Philip K. Dick.
• Animal Farm is short: you can start and finish it in a single sitting. It took me a couple of hours.
• The animal characters are fully realized and easy to empathize with.
• Many furry readers will appreciate that the only romance in the book is homosexual, between Benjamin the donkey and Boxer the horse. In line with the writing style, the relationship is chaste and friendly, and would perhaps be better described as homosocial, a bit like Bert and Ernie of Sesame Street. Still, Benjamin and Boxer are devoted to one another and are inseparable to the point that they plan to retire together.

And yet I don’t think it’s a furry book.

Why? For starters, I think that furry is escapist by nature.

Furry books tend to embrace an alternate universe. Makyo touched on this is some detail in her Layers of Fantasy post. She pointed out that furry art tends to exist in this context:

It is a sort of stacking of different layers of fantasy, with our focus on anthropomorphic animals being layered atop science fiction or fantasy elements.

Makyo goes on to point out that this isn’t a rule that applies to all furry art, and that the alternate-universe concept falls over when we furries socialize in the real world. But I think that furry does necessarily involve some disconnection from the real world, if only to accommodate our self-images as animal people. I understand that this point is arguable (and please do comment away).

I think that a real-life furry gathering is always different from a non-furry group. The alternate names; the blasé acceptance of ears and tails and fursuits; the non-traditional treatment of sexuality, and;- most importantly – the implicit acceptance that each of us are the being that we feel we are on the inside. I’m an anthropomorphic horse; RandomWolf is in a funny mood because there is a full moon; Bob is just a friendly human who likes Thundercats.

I think that furry books reflect the furry community, in that the community is disconnected from the real world. As furries, we want to escape—however marginally—from the real world. We create our own reality.

Animal Farm, despite its talking animals, exists firmly within the real world. It is allegorical, not fantastical. I wouldn’t recommend Bulgakov’s The Master & Margarita as a furry book either.

Animal Farm is an allegory of the Russian Revolution. It retells the story of Russia and the USSR from around World War I through to the last years of World War II. The primary porcine protagonists—Major, Napoleon and Snowball—are respective literal analogs for Marx, Stalin and Trotsky. Animal Farm is no fairytale: there is no redemption, no success. The farm, following revolutionary overthrow of the despotic Farmer Jones, charts a course back to corrupt dictatorship as straight as an arrow.

The children’s storybook language is key to the book’s power and testament to Orwell’s genius. The language primes us to expect and hope that our farm animals will earn themselves a better life through hope and struggle: we’ve read storybooks before. We expect conflict and dark times, but we also expect redemption or at least an engaging Brothers-Grimm-style grotesque coda. But there is no hope for our animals. They are as doomed under the pigs as they were under Farmer Jones.

As well as escapism, a furry book will often employ a literary device where species is shorthand for behaviour. (Cheetahs are fast; foxes are vain; bulls are strong.) This does occur in Animal Farm to an extent—for example we have a strong horse, a lazy cat, and a grumpy donkey—however like the characterization of the pigs, this is meant allegorically. That is, Orwell explores the fates of the Russian people against their (respectively for my three examples) loyalty, work ethic, and cynicism.

To put it more directly: Animal Farm doesn’t explore speciation as a philosophical idea in the way that a furry book does.

I wrote about Gulliver’s Travels (in an article which will also be adapted in the context of the [a][s] Furry Canon project), using this as the key “furry” idea. Swift’s rational horses and animalistic humans and are intended to disconnect our rational nature from our atavistic selves. In doing so, he asks us to consider what it means to be human, a question close to the heart of many furries (and, of course, [adjective][species]). I’d recommend Gulliver’s Travels to any furry interested in exploring the idea of identity.

Another example: The First Book of Lapism by [a][s] contributor Phil Geusz deals with the philosophical aspects of identity and species. Geusz imagines a world where people voluntarily transform themselves into bunny-people in the hope of creating a pacifist and highly-socialized race. Guesz’s books explore the consequences of this new race in an accessible alternate-universe manner. Speculative fiction isn’t personally my cup of furry tea, but Guesz’s works are well written and beloved by many.

Animal Farm is a work of genius and was a very important book when it was published in 1945. History is important, but the Russian Revolution is less relevant in our post cold-war world. And if a version of Animal Farm were published today as an allegory for conflict between the Western and Islamic worlds, I still wouldn’t recommend it as a furry book.

Follow this link to explore everything we have published on the [adjective][species] Furry Canon project.

The Furry Canon, recommended, at the time of publication:
Redwall

Article by Toledo (@toledothehorse). To the furry community, Toledo has mainly been an amateur artist. But since he can’t stop his brain from analyzing furry things, he has decided to put his hoof to the keyboard more often.

I’ve been around the fandom in some fashion for fifteen years. Even longer have I had fleshspace friends who sang Brian Jacques’s praises. But before this week, I had never read anything Redwall. Somehow I’d avoided reading about all those medieval mice and rabbits and otters. Of course, part of that is explicable: before I encountered the furry fandom, the only animals in which I’d had any interest were dinosaurs and dragons. Little woodland creatures put me right off. I also had little interest in anything medieval until around the same time1. Between these two apathies, I’d missed the prime years for Redwall fandom.

Essentially, I am evaluating whether Redwall deserves to be a part of the [adjective][species] Furry Canon without a hint of nostalgia. I do not present this as a claim of objectivity, of course, but only that of an outsider looking in—and to make clear my relationship with the text.

As a preliminary note: I have been told that Redwall, Brian Jacques’s first installment in the series, is not the best of the lot. Mossflower and The Pearls of Lutra have been nominated to me for that title. Not having the time to read all 20+ Redwall novels to adjudicate the representativeness of Redwall, however, I’m left with the fact that it is the first. It is our first glimpse of Jacques’s world, from imagery to narrative style to characterization. It is the threshold of Redwall Abbey.2

Beginning the book, I was immediately put off by a quantity of exclamation points rivalling a Jeb! Bush rally. A Chekhov’s infodump followed on only the third page: the Abbot of Redwall Abbey explains to Matthias, our main character, something he already knows. That is, he goes on for a page about how Martin the Warrior, a mouse knight of ages past, defended the Mossflower (the land surrounding Redwall) against all enemies with his terrible sword but–of course–those days are past, having given way to peace and prosperity at the Abbey for all mouse-, otter-, badger-, hedgehog-, and squirrel-kind. One need not be an especially perceptive reader to chart out the rest of the book in rough strokes after this first chapter: the time of peace is coming to an end and Matthias must find and wield Martin’s sword to defend Redwall. Two pages later: cue the horde of enemies, Cluny the rat and his mangy rodent army, careening toward Redwall. The stage is set.

Characterization is not Jacques’s strong suit. At first, Matthias’s only traits are tripping over excessively large sandals and his fascination with warrior legends: he is the archetypical hero in embryo, a more competent Luke Skywalker. Most other characters fare little better. Particularly painful is Cornflower, (if I recall correctly) the only female abbey mouse to get a name, whose traits are “cooking well” and “being attractive enough that everyone comments about it”; it is no spoiler that she is practically assigned to be Matthias’s romantic partner3. The only character development in the novel occurs when an enemy, threatened with death, swears to do no harm–and immediately becomes a friend. And when it comes to revealing character traits, “show, don’t tell” is a rule Jacques breaks as a matter of course. If he does not explicate one character’s moral status and habits of thought through another character’s words, he does it himself in the narration.

One major criticism of Redwall I had already encountered is relevant here: in this book, species could easily double as a shorthand for personality. Rats, ferrets, stoats, weasels, and foxes are, to a man (animal?), conniving, treacherous, ambitious, and devoid of compassion. On the flipside, the inhabitants of Redwall are valorous and honorable. Shrews self-identify as shrewish.

I’ll admit: I found the first third of the book to be a slog, in part due to lack of interest in the characters. My boredom did not stem from lack of exquisitely described action, however. The book features battle scenes worthy of Peter Jackson4. I did not anticipate so much of what the MPAA calls “fantasy violence”: this is a bloody, sometimes brutal book, with characters slain left and right and blatant displays of apathy and malice. (At one point, a ferret is sliced in half!) And when the book is not following Matthias’s quest for Martin’s sword, it consists of rats and their allies plotting, and setting into action their plots, against the Abbey; meanwhile, the Abbey plots and carries out its own counterattacks. If tactics and fights are your cup of tea—they’re not mine—you will likely love this book.

Why did the book get better for me after the first third, then? Not from anything Jacques did, though Matthias’s search—complete with ancient riddles and daring journeys to the roof and a nearby farm—was a welcome respite from battles. Instead, I realized that I needed to read the book as if it were being performed out loud. While exclamation points, flat characterization, and blatant foreshadowing feel out of place on the page, they truly belong around a campfire. When told with exaggerated intonation and facial expressions, I suspect Redwall would entrance. While this did not fix the book’s flaws, it justified them more than sufficiently. Jacques is an effective oral storyteller disadvantaged when competing against works in a different genre. In that light, the reader begins to see glimmers of genius in description and diction outside the mouth-watering descriptions of Redwall’s feasts.

Many of those hints of genius are found in characters who, as the sole members of their species presented, can stand alone. While their personalities are known types, they are less archetypical, and thereby much more charming. Who can help but love the slightly off-kilter, distracted but dependable British-inflected battle-veteran hare? How about the melancholy aristocrat cat who has sworn off red meat? Or the shrew clan, a mixture of left-wing militia and Lord of the Flies that turns out to be silly and harmless? Even the dissensions and backbiting in Cluny’s horde can be engaging. While all these might be overdone, it is because they are eminently likable. They function as indispensable seasoning for Redwall’s main course. Without Matthias, there would be no Redwall; without the likes of Basil the hare or Constance the badger, I doubt there would be a Redwall phenomenon.

So, does Redwall belong in the [a][s] Furry Canon? Despite its faults and my misgivings—which lead me to shrug at the opportunity to read more from the series—I’d have to answer a strong yes. Here’s why.

First, in the thirty years5 since its first publication, Redwall and its sequels may have achieved greater penetration of mainstream culture than any anthropomorphic work produced in the same time period, save feature films and television shows.6 My edition of the book proclaims on its cover that 20 million copies had been sold by its printing in 2002–no mean feat, and one that cannot be justly overlooked. One fifth grade teacher who noticed me reading Redwall related that it was one of her and her students’ favorite read-aloud books7. And I cannot count the number of my non-furry friends who have loved Redwall; I can only imagine the effect it would have on a young, impressionable proto-furry mind.

Why this incredible success? I would hypothesize that Redwall bridges supposedly “juvenile” talking animals with “adult” fantasy’s battles and legendaria. Just as aliens allowed Star Trek to address racism in the 1960s, woodland critters classify epic adventures—with “damns” and “hells” to boot!—as children’s stories. Redwall renders nearly irrelevant publishing’s fanatical silos of age, opening up a larger readership. What is more, the generic nature of the characters and storylines also makes Redwall more broadly accessible.

Second, due to its deep penetration of young reader culture, Redwall provides many children with their first impressions of certain species that are otherwise under- or un-represented in popular culture8. Here the consistency of characterization by species, otherwise a narrative weakness, is a memetic strength: it can help readers come to associate species with certain traits, giving them a new symbolic language. These symbolic structures are steady foundations upon which a reader can construct a personal identification with a particular species.

Third, Redwall is almost the epitome of the furry aesthetic: bipedal (if not humanoid) talking animals, often dressed in clothes, living in buildings9 and tending agricultural duties, going about their daily lives and having adventures from time to time. The setting—medieval legend—is the nerd’s escapist retreat par excellence, and the stark divide between good and evil can provide a similar respite from everyday moral ambiguity. Unsurprisingly, Redwall has inspired or otherwise influenced innumerable furry productions of which I am aware, including the excellently written and beautifully illustrated online graphic novel Beyond the Western Deep.

Redwall might not be a masterpiece, but it earns its place in the furry canon several times over through its broad fanbase, its longevity, its furry ethos, and influence on the furry fandom itself.

1 Patricia C. Wrede’s Dealing with Dragons, with its civilized, sympathetic dragons, led me to seek out images of dragons online and was the indirect cause of my finding furry media on Yerf and in webcomics. It also opened me to the (faux) medieval aesthetic and works in that vein in which I’d had no previous interest, such as The Hobbit–with its own intelligent dragon!–and The Lord of the Rings.

2 Redwall is also the one I picked up from a book bank for free several years ago, and this year one of my goals is to focus on reading books I own. In this case, my choice of reading material propitiously coincided with the beginning of the [a][s] Furry Canon project.

3  Thank goodness that other female characters, including the sparrows Warbeak and Dunwing, the squirrel Jess, the badger Constance, and the fox Sela get more varied treatment. Cornflower gets a heroic moment herself, though it is by accident.

4 His Lord of the Rings, of course, along the lines of a Helm’s Deep; being “worthy” of his Hobbit films is a circle in my personal hell.

5 It occurs to me that Redwall is as old as furry—the fandom—is itself.

6 Redwall has itself been given the television treatment at least once.

7 Concurrently corroborating my thesis about Redwall’s value as an oral story.

8 There are no ferret, otter, or badger main characters in Disney, for instance.

9 One major snag in my reading experience was that I could never understand the relative scale of the buildings, the woods, and the animals. Nearly every other page I was revising my mental image of something or other. It was terribly distracting.

Follow this link to explore everything we have published on the [adjective][species] Furry Canon project.

 

Guest article by Televassi.

Televassi is a bit of a newcomer to the fandom, however in his time here he’s been amazed by the friendly and creative nature of the people that make it up. Apart from being a writer, he also enjoys rock climbing and scuba diving, and has a keen interest in Celtic and Germanic cultures. You can find this torc wearing wolf on twitter as @Televassi, and find more of his writing and art on FA and Weasyl. He’s always happy to meet new people, so don’t be afraid to say hi!

For a long time I’ve never bothered to explain what I write about to friends and family. I’ve never bothered to explain why I have art of anthropomorphic wolf people. Nor have I bothered to explain precisely who I’m talking to online, or meeting on weekends. “Friends” is usually the monosyllabic and vague answer I’ll give – often met with little investigation now that making friendships online is a little less uncommon.

While such evasions may deflect questions, it isn’t satisfying to lie. It’s only natural to seek to openly express your interests to others. People often construct their identities based on their interests; they introduce themselves as climbers, divers, artists, and writers. In each of those examples, the activity the individual partakes in is not presented just as what they do, but also who they are. The activity becomes who you are, and when you do it, you are expressing yourself. Furry works in the same way too, yet even though it is something that binds Furries into a community through social, written, and artistic expression, many do not openly express it. This is seen in the recent [adjective][species] data snapshots on how open people are about being involved with the fandom:

It is clear that self-identification as Furry does not correlate with public expression of Furry. One probable reason for such a relationship is the media’s negative perception of Furry, a view commonly expressed by Furries and documented by [adjective][species]:

The resulting belief of media scrutiny however, is a perception that does not correlate to current levels of coverage of Furry, a subject which does not appear frequently enough in both print and online news outlets to justify the belief. Regardless, it is clear that Furry is concerned with how it is scrutinised by the media, and this article seeks to explore that scrutiny when it does occur. Analysing recent articles from The New Yorker and Inquisitr, this article will analyse how they misinterpret and misdefine Furry in differing ways.

In the New Yorker article, if you can get past its overbearing style, lies an example of the misdefinition of Furries. For an article delving into post-humanist themes, it falls disappointingly short of understanding the relationship between post-humanism and Furries. Instead, it opts to group Furries with other eccentrics who have undergone attempts to become more ‘animal’; the article specifically mentions the case of a man who tried to live as a badger. As a result, the conclusion of the article rather predictably ends with the caveat that despite human attempts to become more animal, human beings cannot transcend their essential humanity and achieve animality – at best we are left with a human experience of the animal; the anthropomorphic, which, is the essence of the Fandom. The article interprets achieving ‘only’ the anthropomorphic as a failure by all the groups it has gathered together. As a result, the man who failed to live as a badger (to the extent of eating earthworms and living in an earth den) shares the same failure as the Furries who dress up in Fursuits and act like animals – that regardless of trying to become animals, both have failed to transcend their humanity and become animal. Yet this is erroneous, as for most Furries, becoming an animal in the total, ‘feral’ sense if you will, is not the goal. While it is for some, it is not for others – and thus one sees the problem of grouping individuals together without consideration of their individual differences.

One must be extremely suspicious of theories that attempt to create generalising, overarching statements over groups that have vast differences – or to use technical language, to create a ‘totalising metanarrative’. Thus, examining Furries at the same time as a man trying to live as—and thus become—a badger should be treated with the same scepticism one would get for saying anthropomorphic cave paintings are the same as modern day Furry art. Both examples are different, and do not share the same goals even if they share thematic similarities; it is not enough that they are simply anthropomorphic. The mistake of the article lies in imposing a meaning on two similar but ideologically separate groups in order to make them fit a general hypothesis. The nuances of both positions are lost, or one position ends up defining the other. One should examine the differences in a search to find that group’s own meaning, independent from the other. Put simply, such simplistic grouping inevitably places disparate things in the same box, when they should have a box of their own even if they belong on the same shelf. As a aside, thus article was written with the understanding that it’s analysis may well impose an interpretation on the fandom – an amorphous group of individual interpretations of Furry. However, that is something this article shall try to avoid, and neither shall it pretend that it is an authority to a community of individuals with their own valid opinions. Conversely, the problem with the media is that it does impose its own meanings upon Furry, either because journalists do not have enough time undergo extensive research, or that further investigation goes against the type of article they went to write.

From that introduction one can see how Furry can be misrepresented or misdefined in the media. For journalists, Furry seems something to either portray as exotic, with varying degrees of scandalous behaviour added to flavour the mix. For those who are not writing an article that investigates the curiosity of the ‘Other’, they often attempt to define Furry and understand it which, while admirable, carries the risk of defining Furry with little regard for Furries’ individual terms. Thus, Furry can be placed into a category which it wouldn’t necessarily fit – like The New Yorker did. Given the amorphous discourse upon what makes ‘Furry’ within the fandom, any disappointment one may feel arising from erroneous definitions and categorisations is justified. However it is understandable that mainstream media seeks to define Furry in a simple, bitesize way for its audience to understand as time and space are limited. Yet one must keep in mind that the media’s main objective is to cater to its audience, which inevitably is not Furries. As such, there will always be a disconnect – making readers understand and representing Furries accurately are not mutually exclusive. At its worst, the media can simply seek to reinforce the prejudices of its readership, which is not healthy for the Fandom.

This article is not advocating a conscious blockage of the media, because that is a futile gesture. Furries are always going to provoke curiosity, and such curiosity makes the Fandom news-worthy material. Even when the article is about clean content, Furry finds its niche as in ‘eccentric/curiosity’ article, in which the report navigates a fine line between celebrating difference and finding it as an object for ridicule – or simply, for the ‘norm’ to have an object which they can compare themselves too, and find themselves favourably. The latter method in particular can be a mode of reinforcing a belief of superiority for the audience’s own standards, and we inevitably find this when the topic turns to adult content. Adult content wouldn’t be a shock factor for most if sexual activity was seen as solely the business of the parties undertaking it. Yet sexual activity is a vexed topic, and so Furry sexuality is going to receive undue scrutiny because it deviates from the heteronormative standards society commonly holds. For media outlets this is a gift – as it takes little effort to be portrayed as shocking or depraved, and we’ve seen how Furry has been used to that effect in the past. Again, the intent of such pieces isn’t to understand, but to give its audience an object to ridicule – in this case, for entertainment and to feel superior because they are not ‘depraved’. Conservative outlets are more likely to do so than liberal ones; however a significant portion of articles on Furries question Furry sexuality. The response is usually a defensive ‘it’s a minority’ claim. This is telling in itself. The answer really should be ‘it’s not anyone’s business what consenting adults do’, and yet, the fandom is always put on the defensive by such questions, forced to justify itself as acceptable in terms of the readers’ standards, rather than our own. Why should society care about what people find attractive? If it is of age, and if it is consenting, does someone else’s opinions matter? Yet this is not the case, and such scrutiny in articles about the fandom reveals it is not allowed to speak for itself – it rather has to answer the questions of the outsider in a way that is acceptable to them, not to Furries.

When Furry tries to present itself so that it appears acceptable to an article’s audience, it closes down the most liberal aspect of Furry – that it celebrates and embraces a diversity of sexual preferences and fantasies, and for the most part, doesn’t bat an eyelid about it. Of course there are problematic preferences, but if those are of age and consenting, there’s rarely a problem. However, the media isn’t interested in creating nuanced, investigative reports – if audiences really responded to furry sexuality with no judgement over what consenting adults choose to do, then Furry sexuality would not feature.

One can see such scrutiny of Furry sexuality in a recent story about how the Disney movie Zootopia, was allegedly marketed to Furries. As the story spreads from the original Buzzfeed article (which did not mention sexuality at all), the original headline changes into another story, one that is about the scandal of perceived ‘deviant’ sexuality. The article from Inquisitr (aptly named for the witch-hunt it undergoes) takes the title about marketing, and then tries to prove it in a unique way – by attempting to read any hint of sexuality in the film as appealing to Furries’ sexual tastes. There is a sleight of hand here – the focus changes from having a film marketed to Furries, to talking about how the film appeals to Furry sexuality. As a result, this theme appears throughout the article:

“But this doesn’t seem to be an out of the blue connection between Disney and the Furries, as many of the characters in the movie seem a bit sexier than your average Disney creature. One of the animals, voiced by Shakira, was obviously drawn and selected by Disney to exude sex appeal.”

The original topic is twisted in favour of the story the journalist actually wants to write – a sex scandal about a Disney film and Furries, which at the end of the day underlines how the fandom can be misrepresented by those seeking to generate some scandal for their readership to consume.

“The Guardian is saying that Disney fans will find it hard to avoid learning a whole new vocabulary associated with the furry life. Let’s just say that predators and prey mean very different things than in the traditional sense.”

This particular quote is interesting because it is suggestive. Seemingly innocuous enough, the comment of a deviant, alternative predator and prey relationship, works by suggestion. It leads the reader on with a sentence that withholds any facts, in order to give the opportunity for the reader to answer what the alternative meaning is with their own prejudice.

“Tommy Chong, Idris Elba, and Ginnifer Goodwin are just some of the main voices that will lure in adults, as well as the theme of not being judged by your species, and the Mammal Inclusion Program, that helps the bunny Judy (Goodwin) become the first bunny to become a cop, and a sexy, sassy cop at that, who is actively being checked out by all of those around her.”

It’s surprising that this is a PG rated movie being talked about, considering the efforts of the author to extrapolate some sexual interpretation from it. It serves as a good example of a journalist taking one story and twisting it to write their own, ultimately misinterpreting the facts in favour of a more alluring story, no matter how erroneous. The mere mention of the word Furry starts an inevitable link to sex and sexuality, seeking some sort of scandal, which in this case, is ultimately one of misrepresentation and misinterpretation.

Moving on from adult content, another issue is the perception that those who read interviews from figures in the fandom can take them to be authority figures for Furry, that their explanations are the truth, rather than their opinion. Returning to the fact that Furry is a loosely defined collective – united by an appreciation for the anthropomorphic, or the animal. Even in that sentence, one can see Furry is hard to define, as it is easy to find Furries who represent themselves as anthropomorphic animals, or simply as ‘feral’ animals. A common explanation of Furry is that Furries have fursonas, yet there are people in the fandom who do not have one. The challenge for any article is how to define (and thus allow understanding) a subculture where its meaning depends upon individual beliefs? The media simply cannot, or does not understand that Furry has no iron-clad definition; rather, it is individual expression. Furry is lots of individual voices all saying their own thing, rather than one voice saying what they all are. The meaning of Furry depends on how it is expressed, rather than a set of rules everyone follows – because we do not. To speak personally example, my expression of Furry is anthropomorphic Celtic/Germanic warrior culture animals, with classical motifs thrown in for good measure of diversity (and lots of mead!). Warrior wolves clad in mail drinking in mead halls abound, and it is clear that it is an individual expression of Furry. Furry varies between other people – and that is wonderful. However, the creativity arising from the way Furries express their own ideals of Furry has to be condensed and simplified for an article, for both the sake of brevity and understanding. Such compression comes at a loss though. Hence, we arrive at definitions that Furry is about the anthropomorphic, animals, or fursonas – and while those simple statements certainly unite individual’s expressions, they strip away the creativity of each individual’s expression of Furry; the nuances that make people fascinating are gone. Articles with interviews in particular have trouble with this, as they have to negotiate between two issues when exploring Furry. One, that it doesn’t simplify an interviewee’s individual expression of Furry; however such attention can give that individual the danger of seeming like an authority figure because they are the only one speaking. Two, that it takes many individual’s expressions and finds a uniting, often simplistic theme, which prevents an authority figure from rising, but also removes the creative diversity that makes Furry what it is.

Finally, the last point about Furry in the mainstream media is simply a suggestion that it is not actually ready, ideologically, for what Furry does. Outside of Furry, we live in an epoch of our own making – the newly declared Anthropocene, an age where humans have an impact on shaping what goes on this planet. Human beings are undoubtedly in control and at the top of the order of things. This conflicts with Furry, because Furry is post-human, Furry reduces that superiority of human beings. Furry is not anthropocentric in a time when society is. Furry takes specifically human traits – our perception of the world, our human brand of intelligence, our lifestyle, language, emotions, etc., and places them in post-human bodies. Furry looks beyond the human and unities it with the animal – at a time when animals, though seen as capable of intelligence and perhaps emotion, are seen as lesser beings compared to humans. Furry is subversive because it marries human traits with animal ones, creating hybrids that remove once human traits and place them into animal mixes; it deprivilages essentialist ‘human’ traits. In doing so, this redefines our conception of what is exclusively human, expanding them into universal traits any sentient being can hold – a move which reduces the speciality, and thus the superiority of humanity we see today.

In conclusion, the question is not whether Furries should ignore the media. That’s a futile question because unless Furry was to move offline and live in a cave (like the badger man), it would probably still gain media attention. So should Furries be concerned with the media? No, for the reasons that have been given – misrepresentation, justification of adult content, pressure to appear acceptable, misdefinition, simplification, and being ahead of the times. To pick one reason above all as to why Furries shouldn’t bother about the media, it is that Furry is individual. How you express yourself matters more than what people say about it, and if no harm is done, what justification do other people have to tell you how to express yourself? Furry is creative, and that imaginative expression should not be diluted, simplified, or made to toe a standard line* for the sake of pleasing others. Just as some in Furry may find ‘sparkledogs’ or Germanic warrior wolves in mead-halls their anathema of Furry, the principle remains the same. Express your individuality, celebrate it.

 

*with thanks to Patch of Dogpatch Press for catching a typo

 

There is a long and rich tradition of furries in fiction. From the classics of Aesop’s Fables to the latest and greatest in sci-fi/fantasy novels, comics and movies, we’ve seen countless stories featuring anthropomorphic creatures. Many of those stories are fine for what they are—morality tales or pieces of fizzy entertainment that allow us to escape into a different world for a time. Some of them, however, touch us so deeply, that they become landmarks for our personal development. When we find ourselves in the company of like-minded individuals, we find that many of us share the same landmarks; entire communities have developed on the backs of this shared connection.

JM (editor horse-in-chief of [a][s]) and I were talking about Fred Patten’s article “What The Well-Read Furry Should Read,” which features what Fred considers to be the top ten classics of the fandom. It’s not a bad list, but we had a number of questions. How on Earth did he manage to narrow down hundreds of years of furry fiction down to a ten best list? What was the criteria to make something truly great? How did Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Animal Farm make the list, but Maus and The Wind in the Willows did not?

I know how subjective terms like “greatest” can turn an innocuous list into a flashpoint of debate, and we here at [a][s] love our opinions and classifications as much as the next data-wonk. So we thought—why not create our own list of novels and stories that we believe serve as cultural touchstones for the furry community? If you wanted to give someone a list of four or five novels that explained the furry aesthetic and the community’s fundamental love of anthropomorphic animals, what would you include?

Thus, the idea for “The Furry Canon” was born. We’d like to introduce an ongoing, occasional set of articles that digs into a book or set of stories, reviews them on their own merits and then determines whether they should be added to a list of stories we feel represent the “idea/aesthetic” of furry as a whole.

This is a delicate operation. Who the hell are we to determine what gets added and what doesn’t? Well, we’re enthusiastic readers, just like you. To hold ourselves to an objective (or at least transparent) standard, we thought we’d make a list of criteria that would help determine whether or not a work should be added to the list.

QUALITY. Obviously, we wouldn’t add just any book or story to the Furry Canon. If we’re going to suggest these works the curious or uninitiated, at the very least they should be excellent books to read. Is the work strong enough that, even without the elements we’re most interested in, we’d be inclined to read it?

LONGEVITY. This is a little trickier, but there are a lot of stories that set the world on fire for a year or two, then mysteriously and suddenly fade away. Does the work still hold up, even across the gulf of time and the changes society has undergone since it was published? Is it a perfect encapsulation of a point in time of the furry community or the broader world? Is there something in the work that’s still relevant and vital?

RELEVANCY. Does the story capture a central aesthetic, idea or emotion that’s quintessentially furry? Does it serve as a cultural signpost for the community, something that we can know and understand? What is it about the work that serves as an excellent representation for our fandom?

Obviously, our decisions on what gets included and what does not won’t work for everyone—but we’re hoping that over time, we can cultivate a list of our own that works well as a literary representation of our community.

So, what do you think, [a][s] readers? What novels or collections would you put forward as candidates?

Furry life is real life, kinda.

Ever had a furry friend disappear? That doesn’t happen in real life.

It’s an important event when someone close to you, non-furry, dies. Friends and family gather and mourn and celebrate and reflect on the life of the person they’ve lost. If the deceased was young, people lament the life that will never be lived. If the deceased is old, people talk about the value and brevity of a full life.

Celebrating life and death is important, and it’s something that is often denied to the furry friends of the deceased. Let’s say that I, your humble furry author, slip on some ice on Harleyford Street’s sloping pavement and get struck by an aggressively-driven number 36 bus this Thursday morning. You, gentle furry reader, will probably find out about this over social media a few days later.

You and I have a relationship, even if it’s only through you reading my words here on [adjective][species]. You will read about my death, just like we have all read about the deaths of other furries, and it’ll feel like I’ve been snuffed out without any opportunity for you to meaningfully participate in any sort of mourning process. Maybe you’ll read some comments here on [a][s], maybe you’ll have a quick scan through my Twitter feed or my Weasyl to see what I was doing or thinking in my last hours of life. You’ll probably feel downhearted, in particular for those people closest to me.

In the non-furry world, any vague acquaintance or family member will be able to participate in mourning my death. Someone with a distant relationship will be able to attend my funeral, pass on condolences directly and meaningfully, and be surrounded by other people who are sharing the experience. They will be able to process how a sudden death affects their relationship with life, and understand how it affects other people.

Mourning, even for a distant acquaintance, can be a valuable process.

Of course, all those non-furry acquaintances will only be celebrating a subset of my life. I have a second life, my furry life, and while the two lives intersect, that intersection is far from complete. The separation between those two lives means that furry friends immediately become second-class when someone dies.

It’s not just death of course. There are other life events that can only occur once, where furries must be either integrated or excluded: weddings, births, graduations, that sort of thing.

The need or desire to integrate one’s furry and non-furry lives drives many people to “come out” as a furry, to their friends and/or family. It’s often especially important for young people who aren’t independent from their parents – it’s tough to hide a big part of your life if you don’t have full control. This is often easier said than done, because—by normal societal standards—furry is weird.

I have heard Anthrocon chairman Uncle Kage advise young furries against “coming out”. To the best of my recollection, and I’m paraphrasing, his point is that if you treat furry like it’s something controversial, then it’ll seem controversial. Yet furry social structures can be different enough from non-furry life to be exactly that.

Furry relationships tend to transcend barriers that exist in the non-furry world. We get to know one another via a furry animal-person identity. And although our furry identities aren’t physically real, I believe that they are—ironically—a more honest and true representation of ourselves. Out there in our non-furry life, relationships only begin once we’ve sized one another up on the basis of social structures like class, race, gender, age, and affluence.

Our relative disregard for these social barriers is one of the best things about our furry life, but it’s also something that makes furry relationships seem weird or controversial to outsiders. Your furry friends probably don’t look like your non-furry friends. When you introduce your furry and non-fury friends to one another, those social barriers will be firmly back in place, and there is a real risk that the two groups won’t get along.

A lot of furry takes place online, of course, but little changes when we socialise in meatspace. Furry is still weird, and this is in contrast with other relationships that begin on the internet—perhaps online dating or fandoms—because these relationships aren’t forged in the unique furry social crucible.

The perils of being open about weirdness will be familiar to many of us, be that for unusual gender expression, or geeky interests, or sexual behaviour. It’s a terrible compromise to make, between being openly and genuinely yourself, and meeting the social expectations of others. And it’s worse that those people who fit comfortably in the mainstream often don’t understand the problem – they can be unable or unwilling to consider what it’s like to be a bit different.

If you are open about your furry life then a lot of new topics are on the table. The social structure of furry is complicated enough, but of course anyone with more than a passing curiosity will quickly learn about conventions, fursuits, and—of course—sex and pornography. These topics might—might—be okay with some close non-furry friends but are unlikely to be respected by a bigoted uncle. And of course furry can become fuel for gossip, and your message of furry fellowship can not be controlled in the face of rumourmongering and CSI episodes.

Many furries eventually come to some sort of uneasy compromise, where they are openly furry around a small subset of close friends and family, and share their non-furry social spaces with a small subset of their furry group.

This works well… most of the time. When something important happens, like death, our furry life is demoted to second-class status.

Worse is that we often never know what has happened when a furry friend disappears. There are a lot of reasons it may have happened: some furries leave the fandom, some change their furry identity, and some get hit by the number 36 bus. In many cases the reasoning is never shared online, and an awful lot of furs don’t many other furries in the offline world.

We asked this question—how many furries do you know in person?—on the Furry Survey up until 2013:

A huge proportion of furries know no other furries at all in person. Many of these furs will be young and/or live in isolated areas that make meeting close furry friends (temporarily) untenable. If something happens to one of these furries, the rest of may never know why. They will just disappear.

Grief is an important part of life. We furries rarely get the chance to properly acknowledge a death, and celebrate a life. Our friends and lovers and partners can simply fade away over time, in limbo, never quite gone and never to return.

With thanks to Jason from Marfed.

Click here for our interactive species popularity vs age visualization.

Visualization by Ruxley. Species and age data taken from the 2015 Furry Survey. click through for the interactive version.

Here at [adjective][species] we are just starting to get to grips with the wealth of data collected in the 2015 Furry Survey. We collected valid responses from more than 11,000 furries last year. This collection, including responses from annual surveys dating back to 2009, represents an unprecedented insight into furry.

We recently shared our entire dataset with Nuka (aka Courtney Plante PhD, aka Dr. Cat), who is one of the scientists behind (and co-founder of) the International Anthropomorphic Research Project. He performed an analysis for us, looking at how different factors affect the furry experience, which is presented below.

This is a little bit different from the way we normally present data here on [a][s] – it’s the difference between professional and amateur analysis. As you can see, the professional statistical analysis is comprehensive but can teeter towards incomprehensibility. Happily, Dr. Cat provides some interpretation rather than merely the dry facts.

(For the stats-savvy, the data were analyzed as a series of linear regressions. It’s worth noting that in a sample of 30,000 people, even the most minuscule effects can be “statistically significant” (e.g., p<.05). For the purpose of this analysis, Dr. Cat instead used interpreted standardized beta weights for their “practical significance”.)

… What am I looking at, Dr. Cat?

Based on this sample of 38,387 (collapsed across years of the survey), it seems that younger furries are significantly more likely to be “single” in the fandom. To put it another way, older furries are more likely to be in some kind of relationship.

… What am I looking at, Dr. Cat?

Based on this sample of 39,193 (collapsed across years of the survey), it seems that age is basically unrelated to “how furry” a furry feels. To put it another way, there are older AND younger furries who are “just barely furry”, and older and younger furries who are “ridiculously furry”.

… What am I looking at, Dr. Cat?

These results speak to the ones above; Based on this sample of 38,873 (collapsed across years of the survey), it seems that “how furry” you are also has nothing to do with how long you’ve been in the fandom. Newer furries can be just as “ridiculously furry” as furries who’ve been furry for a long time.

… What am I looking at, Dr. Cat?

Based on this sample of 27,410 (collapsed across years of the survey), it seems that age has nothing to do with how many furries you know. Older furries seem to know about as many furries, on average, as younger furries do.

… What am I looking at, Dr. Cat?

In conjunction with the above findings, based on this sample of 27,938 (collapsed across years of the survey), it also doesn’t seem to matter how long you’ve been a furry. Furries who’ve been around for just a year or two seem to know about as many furries as furries who’ve been in the fandom for a long time (suggesting either that furries make furry friends really quick OR that furries start to lose the furry friends they initially met as they spend more time in the fandom).

… What am I looking at, Dr. Cat?

You’d think that, as you came to know more furries, you’d “come out” more as a furry, or vice-versa. And yet, based on this sample of 39,226 (collapsed across years of the survey), this doesn’t seem to be the case. How “out” you are as a furry is unrelated to how many furries you happen to know.

… What am I looking at, Dr. Cat?

Knowing more furries doesn’t seem to help furries “come out” as furry, but, based on this sample of 39,362 (collapsed across years of the survey), it does seem to be the case that older furries are “more out” than younger furries are. Whether this is because older people are more secure with who they are, fear social judgment less, or are in a position where they don’t have to fear social judgment, remains to be seen.

… What am I looking at, Dr. Cat?

Interestingly, while age was somewhat related with “coming out”, the extent to which someone is a furry is HUGELY predictive of how “out” they are, based on this sample of 39,971 (collapsed across years of the survey). Maybe it’s because furries who are REALLY furry find it hard to keep it under wraps, or maybe it’s because being “out” as a furry helps furries to feel “more furry”. Either way, the relationship is particularly strong.

… What am I looking at, Dr. Cat?

Based on this sample of 33,452 (collapsed across years of the survey), the extent to which furries see the average “non-furry” as having positive attitudes towards furries predicts how “out” they, themselves are. In other words, how “out” a furry is seems to be based, in part, on how positive they think non-furries around them are. This could be because furries who perceive hostility from the world around them feel they have a reason to keep it to themselves, OR it could be because furries who have “come out” have been pleasantly surprised by the acceptance of others.

… What am I looking at, Dr. Cat?

I created a composite variable of “fandom participation” which includes a variety of activities (participating on furry forums, going to cons, going to meet-ups, etc.). I then pitted three different predictors of fandom participation against one another – age, how many years a person has been a furry, and how furry a person is – to see which most strongly predicts participation. Based on this sample of 37,806 (collapsed across years of the survey), it seems that how many years a person has been a furry has next to no effect on how actively they participate in the fandom. Age, on the other hand, does seem to predict participation, with older furs being more active participants in the fandom. Most strong of all, however, is how furry a person considers themselves to be furry (by a LONG shot).

In other words, the most active furries are also the ones who most strongly identify as furries, not necessarily the ones who’ve been around in the fandom the longest (although older furries are more active; this may owe to the fact that they have more disposable income than younger furries, and are more able to, say, make it to conventions).

At furry conventions, I tend to physically stand out from the crowd. I’m older than most furs, and don’t tend to wear “convention gear” like ears and a tail. Indeed, due to sheer absent-mindedness I often even forget to wear my badge. So it’s natural, I suppose, that “outsiders” often approach me and ask “Sir, what is this whole “furry” thing about, anyway? Why is everyone here dressed so strangely?”

So, in turn it’s also natural that I’ve given considerable thought to the matter. “We’re people who like anthropomorphic art and literature and such,” is my usual quick-and-dirty answer. “Think Nick Wilde, or Bugs Bunny.” And that’s usually good enough; people approaching a stranger in public generally aren’t seeking anything more. Yet this is also the simplest and most facile of all responses, one that opens more doors than it closes. For the people surrounding us when this conversation takes place have often traveled hundreds or even thousands of miles to be there, crossed entire continents and oceans on journeys that they’ve often saved for years to undertake. With all due to respect to Nick and Bugs, there’s clearly something much deeper at work.

This is a problem I’ve been thinking about from many different angles for over fifteen years. It was about a decade ago that I first proposed— in a similarly-themed column in a similar venue— that people become furries largely due to being exposed to large numbers of anthropomorphic images during early childhood, specifically during the period of brain development when self-identity is established. (In this stage, children the world over begin to obsessively draw crude circles. Then eyes and a mouth appear, at first grotesquely mis-placed and then growing ever more certain, until it’s clear that all along the goal has been to create a recognizable human face. Many experts believe that this is an outward manifestation of the child learning “I am a human, and these are my kind. I am one of these.”) When one’s environment is populated with warm, smiling plush animals, not to mention colorful, attention-fixating “living” images playfully capering across the video-screens that seem to soak up an ever-growing proportion of our childhood, well… I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that many of today’s furries scowled in infantile concentration and scrawled out pointy ears atop the heads of those first clumsy images, and perhaps whiskers, muzzles and outsized eyes as well. I don’t claim to know this for fact, nor is it a theory I’m advancing in any sort of serious academic way— I’m a retired auto worker, after all, not a developmental psychologist. But it’s compelling enough that, as a thoughtful non-professional. I’ve never come across a better theory.

Because, you see, furry clearly runs deep. It has to, or else people wouldn’t willingly spend so much or travel so far or, for that matter, expose themselves to so much ridicule. Over and over again I’ve met furs who’ve “discovered” the fandom at a relatively advanced age, and it’s almost invariably a profoundly emotional experience for them. They smile and weep and claim to feel “at home” and “among their own kind” for the first time ever. (Certainly this was the case for me.)

Does this sound like something rooted in the very core of one’s self-identity, or what? I’m lucky in that I have two clear memories of being three years old. One of them is of me picturing myself as an anthropomorphic character. Not as a pretend-thing— to me it was real, the way I was supposed to be shaped. Not only do I suspect that I’ve been shaped that way somewhere deep down in my own head ever since, but I also suspect that many other “hard-core furries” are “wrong-shaped” as well. If my theory is indeed correct, this has profound implications both for us as individuals and the fandom as a whole. Even the sexual aspects of the furry fandom seem— to uneducated me, at least— rooted in a “different” self-identity at the very deepest of levels. The vast majority of the sex-poses and erotic situations portrayed in furry erotica are perfectly accessible to humans of fully normal anatomy. Yet for some (not all, and probably not even most!) furries these otherwise very ordinary portrayals convey far more power when the characters wear permanent fur coats. Why does this matter so much, if not that it reflects a “kink” in our innermost self-identities?

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. One of the few demonstrably unique traits that defines humanity is the ability to put one’s self in someone else’s head and see things from their point of view. (Studies show that the majority of four-year-olds are capable of this, while most two-year-olds are not. It’s an intellectual leap chimps and other species never take.) I suspect that people who have a fuzzy (pun intended) sense of self-identity tend to be better at this than “ordinary” people. Which in turns quite logically leads to increased empathy and all the things that follow from it. Including perhaps the tendency towards acceptance and tolerance that pretty much everyone, even outsiders, perceives as one of the more remarkable hallmarks of our fandom. I’d also submit that it also probably makes for a higher level of creativity in general— certainly as a writer I’ve personally benefitted from the ability to “see through alien eyes”. In fact, I’ve almost come to regard it as a sort of social superpower.

So that’s what I, in my uneducated, non-professional way, think furry is really all about. It’s a broadened sense of self-identity that sometimes arises due to a child-rearing practice quite common in our culture— that of drowning our children in highly-attractive anthro-imagery during a key developmental stage, imagery close enough to human that we “mistakenly” incorporate it into our deepest sense of self. We seek each other out and rejoice in our brotherhood because we really are different in a fundamental and basic way, and delight in each other’s art and culture because it truly does diverge in significant, important ways from mainstream society’s product.

Just as we ourselves do.

In other words, I think furries really are different. Most of the passers-by at conventions who question who and what we are will never in a million years either truly understand us or what it is that we’re so profoundly rejoicing in together. Yet because of our innate flexibility of identity, we have no problem whatsoever understanding them.

Advantage, furries!

Well, Zootopia has been in theatres since the 18th here in Italy, and being the usual party animal that I am, I finally went to see it with my posse of friends. I’m lying, of course – nobody I know in real life is interested in anthropomorphic animals, so I took advantage of a two-hour break from university and attended a midday showing in a cinema with just six other people. Oddly, mostly males around college age. So if you want a furry’s opinion on it, here we go.

Let’s get the pressing issue out of the way. Is Zootopia a good movie? Yes.

Is Zootopia a great movie? I feel fairly confident in saying that, to me, yes.

Is Zootopia a masterpiece? It gets close at times. I have a few gripes that I’ll talk about– no spoilers at all, of course. You can read safely.

Now let’s talk.

There’s not much to say about animation and visuals, it’s Disney we’re talking about. Excellent designs abound, every single scene has a crowd of animals, each doing its own thing, the city always feels incredibly alive. A train ride in the first ten minutes provides some incredible imagery, sometimes verging on sci-fi/punk ideas as the artists flex their biceps and show us the details of what keeps Zootopia a habitable space for every species. Audio design is particularly strong, and I absolutely recommend a place with a good sound system, but I wasn’t that impressed by the movie’s score.

It’s a family movie, so don’t think it’s aimed “at the fandom” as some people hope. As much as it has its adult moments (and how), you need some suspension of disbelief to enjoy it, especially concerning the inner workings of a police force. The aww-power is strong, with a certain chubby cheetah quickly becoming the character in a Disney movie I wanted to hug the most in the last few years. The introduction also tugs at people’s hearts through wide eyes and large heads, and it’s incredibly effective. The animation colossus has done an incredible job with visual design, and I’m pretty sure that those of you with kids are going to have to buy a lot of toys this spring. And yet…

If it feels like I’m being vague, it’s because of the two real strengths of this movie: its structure and its balls. The story frames itself within a narrative we’ve all already heard a million times before – country character (Judy Hopps) is dissatisfied with her life, wishes to be more than she is, moves away in search of fortunes, meets a lovable rogue type (Nick Wilde) whose respect she has to earn, blah blah blah. Classic buddy adventure format. You come in the theater with the expectation of seeing a well-realized movie of that kind, and you do.

But the movie knows that. In a sense, it ditches a clearly defined three-act structure – or better, rolls with it and shines. There is a clearly defined point where the movie turns on its head and goes from pretty good to “it’s been two days and I’m still thinking about it” territory, and it uses parallelism and reincorporation in ways that honestly taught me a thing or two. It’s also quite brave; I’m not talking just about the theme, which is in fact developed along some strongly (and scarily) implied real world references, but the action too doesn’t pull any punches. And expect a few horror tropes to sneak in – Zootopia isn’t afraid of getting its paws dirty when it needs to, and it does get close to the line sometimes (but, alas, no spoilers).

It’s not a perfect movie. It left me with a strong feeling that they left a lot of scenes – a lot – on the cutting floor, leaving a certain character underdeveloped and lacking the denouement they deserve, and to be completely frank, there’s one person from all the commercials that feels like they’ve been shoehorned in by studio executives for how much they affect the plot. I’m really curious to watch an extended version, because it might be able to fix all my issues with it. It’s an unusually long movie as well – but as I said, the plot is unusual, and would have never worked had it been shortened down.

So, yeah. Hopes confirmed, Zootopia is great. And I REALLY want to talk about it – I want to avoid spoilers here, but there are two scenes in particular that when juxtaposed I find really hard not to read as an anti-Disney mindset statement, and I have a theory about it that pretty much only furries would lend an ear to. Get your buddy cops hat on, wear some nice shades, and enjoy. Nick is cool, and I can already imagine a tidal wave of fanart from how he turns out at the end of the movie. It’s managed to surpass my expectations, and I had already set them relatively high. It made me feel like a kid again.

I kinda missed that.

Are you a furry? Do you like to drink? Do you have the gumption to submit your very own cocktail recipe to the [a][s] Furry Cocktail competition? Well we sure do hope so!

Test your palate and your pluck by submitting recipes and pictures of your very own furry or furry convention themed cocktails. Your character can be here!

Cocktails will be accepted based on three qualities:

Theme and originality: Does your cocktail really remind us of what it’s supposed to be? Does your sparkle dog shine brighter than all of the rest? Did you just give us a White Russian and call it the Wistful Arkie? Did you just give us a Sex on the Beach and call it Kyell Gold’s Secret Anthology? You cannot fool Chairman George!

Appearance: We will be including beautiful pictures of your cocktail, so remember to send them in! Or hideous ones. Whatever it’s supposed to look like. If not, we need detailed instructions on how it is prepared so that we can take the pictures ourselves. We are not trustworthy photographers, so it is highly recommended that you provide your own.  

Taste: Does it taste good (or at least on theme)? Are the components well-balanced? Do the flavor notes come through? Does it taste more like the individual flavors, or more like alcohol? Make sure not to overpower your drinks!

This project is mostly for fun and science so there will be no rewards. Disgusting or delighting Chairman George Squares and the [a][s] tasting panel will be its own reward. We will post some of the best and worst cocktails that we receive.

Submit your potable productions to: [email protected].