Alexander Grey's stories

Sun 31 Aug 2008 - 19:00

Yiffy International is the new kid on the adult furry block, a new merger of the three individually well known sites Yiffy.net, Yiffy.tk and Furrum.

The news post following the merger described why it had occurred: “Yiffy.Tk was a vibrant site with a slow forum, Yiffy.Net was a vibrant forum but needed a full site and Furrum.com had recently been dropped by its web host due to attacks. We all came together to give our users a more robust and active venue than we could offer on our own, and to give those who lost their accounts on Furrum a new place to start.”

The same post quashed apparent rumours that the sites had been bought out by Yiffy.tk, the base for the combined site.

Sun 31 Aug 2008 - 19:00

With a merger of Furry Art Piles and MyFursona looking set for the near future, whatever are they going to call the new site?

Major furry archive and community Furry Art Pile suddenly announced it’s closure on August 27, 2008, sending repercussions across the furry community. Lone site administrator Dylan Hafertepen posted an offline message stating: “This isn’t fun for me anymore. I spend too much time everyday developing new features and optimizing the code to perfection; I never have time for my other projects.”

Many criticized his decision to bring the site offline without any warning to the users, and the site came back online later that day with a new closing date of September 1. Following the announcement there were a few people showing interest in taking control of the site, one of these being the consortium behind the furry fandom’s largest dedicated social-network, MyFursona. Talks between the two parties were not completed at the time of writing.

Sun 31 Aug 2008 - 19:00

Inflatable ‘roo and fursuiter Oz Kangaroo has announced his plans to start Australia’s first furry convention.

Named Furry Down Under - or FurDU for short - the con is set to start in April 2009 with a $60 registration fee (not including accommodation) and have close access to a number of leisure facilities.

The most intriguing difference that FurDU has from other conventions is that - instead of a hotel or convention centre - FurDU is set to take place in a newly built apartment block, where each attendee for the fee of $150 per night gets their own fully furnished apartment with bedrooms, kitchens and bathrooms. This is Australia’s first planned fully-featured convention, set to complement large furmeets such as FurJAM and MiDFur. The website for FurDU is coming soon.

(Ed's note: This was later found not to be the first Australian convention. MidFur X occurred a few months following the initial publication of this article.)

Sun 31 Aug 2008 - 19:00

The WikiFur international homepage

Internet furry encyclopaedia WikiFur has finally made it’s way from Wikia following disputes over the wiki-farms new advertising policies.

Wikia, co-founded by Wikipedia chairman Jimbo Wales, has in recent years been struggling to make enough money to keep itself in the black and a few months ago introduced plans to introduce more intrusive advertising and the forcing of new formatting of wikis to anonymous users - which make up the majority of Wikia’s userbase (curiously Wikia’s largest hosted wiki, Uncyclopedia, is unaffected by the changes, ensuring cries of favouritism).

After Wikia refused to change their stance on the matter, WikiFur administrators voted unanimously to leave the host with just one abstention.

The new server has been kindly donated by popular fursuiter Timduru at no cost to the WikiFur userbase.

Sun 31 Aug 2008 - 19:00

Manchester's Piccadilly Gardens. Some furs have voiced discontent with the current NorthernFurs meet schedule.

A new discussion has cropped up on the UKFur forum concerning the current NorthernFurs meet schedule.

The current six cities rotation of Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool, Chester, York and Leeds is considered by some to be too unbalanced, with Manchester and Sheffield furmeets drawing significantly larger crowds in comparison to Chester and Liverpool – where attendance rarely exceeds 30 people. Hull and Newcastle may replace these cities come 2009.

Others however have more ambitious ideas and wish to completely reshape the Northern organisation, adding numerous new cities and increasing the frequency of others. Some of the most aspiring ideas put larger meets – such as Manchester – hosting up to 18 meets per year. No conclusions have yet been drawn on the matter.

Sun 31 Aug 2008 - 19:00

The LondonFurs averted potential disaster this month, as the Apostle bar – the venue for just one London furmeet – went into administration. The sudden short-notice closure of the bar, combined with a £350 deposit already paid and an organiser in no position to work to such a schedule left the group in disarray.

With the meet on the verge of being cancelled, ex-organiser Rapido joined with London regular Lupus Londonwolf to pull together an impromptu change of location to The Spirit on Patemoster Square. The £250 deposit belonging to organiser Spargue also managed to be recovered, it is thought that The Spirit may now be adopted as the new London furmeet venue.

Sun 31 Aug 2008 - 19:00

Hello ladies and gentlefurs! Remember to keep your cursor over that close button just in case your mum walks in on you, cause this issue is all about fighting your way out of the closet and announcing your fuzzy little persuasion to the world… should you wish to of course.

You see, announcing something like the furry fandom to the world is like having sex with a beautiful woman (or man, depending); there’s no right or wrong way of doing it, and in any case you’re going to need to do it softly to coax it in as if it were something good but perfectly natural. Go in too hard and you could cause more harm than good, too soft and your advances may go unnoticed.

Okay, that simile got creepy. Anyway, should you choose to oust yourself or not, you can at least enjoy the tunes along the way. Yes, in a desperate act to do something completely different I’m going to be doing my article through the medium of music, colour and text.

Enjoy the show, be sure to take advantage of comments, and be sure to sign The Chained Wolf’s petition! (Although you’ll probably want to know why first!)

Sun 31 Aug 2008 - 19:00

Not something particularly noticeable when you’re blowing up buses, pretending to be an East European called Niko; but talk radio channel WKTT (available in most vehicles) features a delightful chap known as Richard Bastion, who’s show intro mentions a teensy bit about the furries we all know and love.

Caller: There’s these sick degenerate folks known as furries. They dress up in this cute little bunny suit with holes cut in them for penises to stick out and they pound each others heinies makin’ weird ass animal noises.

Richard Bastion: Did you hear what public television has brought to you America? Do you hear what’s happened to the children? Heinie pounding!

Tue 1 Jul 2008 - 12:00

Tori BelliachiIt was a cold, wet day in Manchester town on June 21st, but the atmosphere inside the Manchester YHA was as flaming as the residents of Canal Street just a few blocks away. Yes, the long awaited ConFuzzled is in town! And we here at The Furtean Times felt we should splash out a bit and report live from the convention itself, I mean, we have been documenting the rise of this homegrown convention since issue one; it was only fair we gave it a shot for a final finale.

One year of planning later and The Furtean Times is in the warm confines of the ConFuzzled hostel, a little damp from the unfortunately less welcoming weather outside; the newly renovated YHA in the Castlefield area of Manchester providing a much more inviting environment. In this one building there was 136 furs packed in to 35 rooms, served with top of the range facilities and events.

« To put it concisely, my opinion of ConFuzzled so far is as follows: Completely awesome! » ~ Fenrir