When the original SoFurry launched at the end of 2009 there was a certain amount of displeasure with the new site. Despite this, the user count more than doubled, and by June 2011 SoFurry had over 150 000 users. Staff then launched the SoFurry 2.0 beta, an attempt to completely redo SoFurry, improving the code and addressing user complaints.

During the seven-month beta period, there were regular bug fixes (and a public list of upcoming features). This wasn't limited to submitted bugs; SoFurry owner Toumal also responded to criticisms about the site, for example on Chipotle's review of furry story sites. The project was not without problems, however, and the site at one point seemed to face copyright challenges concerning part of it's code, namely for the chat feature.

The team worked hard and on 23 January, after about three days of down time, SoFurry was reborn. I took the time to ask Toumal a few questions regarding its development and future.

Results for the Summer 2011 International Furry Survey led by Dr. Gerbasi and Nuka were released last month, and some are quite surprising. The study attracted 1940 participants (179 'non-furry'). 45% came from Anthrocon 2011; the rest filled out the survey online.

The same team ran an online survey last January, and a follow-up at Furry Fiesta 2011.

This survey swept in members of several related groups, most of whom saw themselves as distinct from furries. 74.4% of participants identified solely as furry, while 8.8% claimed to be therians and 4.7% otherkin. 3.6% felt they belonged to both furry and one of these groups.

Significant differences were found between furries and therians, and male and female furs.

San Fernando sounds like a bleak place! It’s a small island port that has sunk into squalor, tyrannized by a giant, sadistic gangster, “Smiley O”, Smiley O’Hannigan – a wolf so massive that he seems to be literally bulletproof – and his predator thugs. The isolated town has been written off by the rest of the world:

‘But … but nobody leaves San Fernando!’ It was true. The nearest port, they had said in school, was two weeks’ journey by boat, north to the southern tip of Galway. Nobody could get visas anymore.   No one was allowed out. (p. 68)

Johnny Ludlam is a sixteen-year-old jackrabbit, the fatherless son of an elderly music teacher. In happier days his father was the local hero, a lifeguard who had saved almost forty people from drowning before he disappeared in a rescue gone bad.

Today the inhabitants of San Fernando are all dispirited, and the impoverished Johnny and his mother are about to lose their apartment. Johnny’s sole friend is the streetwise junkie Rab, a color-shifting, normally pale-green anole. Johnny’s mother is reduced to giving him her valuable clarinet to pawn for rent money, but nobody will buy it. Nobody has time for music any more in San Fernando.

Johnny dreams of becoming a hero, as his father was. And he may have a crazy chance.

Illustrated by Cooner. Dallas, TX, FurPlanet Productions, January 2011.
Trade paperback $9.95 (191 pages), Kindle $5.99.

Dangerous Jade is a work of anthropomorphic fiction for adult readers only. (publisher’s rating)

Actually, although there are some torrid romantic scenes and a lot of adult language here, it is all standard M/F sex between consenting adults; less X-rated than many mainstream novels or R-rated motion pictures.

This is also #4 in FurPlanet’s new Cupcakes line of works shorter than novel length. Dangerous Jade is “only” a novella, but it delivers a complete and satisfying story.

Illustrated by Meesh. Dallas, TX, FurPlanet Productions, January 2012, trade paperback $9.95 (vii + 81 pages).

The Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association, which administers the annual Ursa Major Awards, has closed the 2011 Recommended Anthropomorphic Reading List.

Recommendations for the 2012 Reading List are now being accepted, although the 2012 List will not be posted on the UMA website until March 1, after the nominations for the 2011 Awards have closed. Voting on the 2011 Awards finalists will open on March 15.

All fans are invited to recommend what they feel are worthwhile anthropomorphic works in eleven categories (motion pictures, dramatic short films or broadcasts, novels, short fiction, other literary works, graphic stories, comic strips, magazines, published illustrations, games, and websites) first published during 2012. This List is often used by fans to nominate in the next year's Awards.

Nominations are open for the 2011 Ursa Major Awards, intended to recognize the best works published in the field of anthropomorphics last year. Nominations close on February 29; voting starts March 15 and closes May 4 (to allow last-minute voting from Morphicon).

Furry fans may nominate up to five works in each category. The 2011 Awards will be announced and presented in a ceremony at CaliFur VIII in Irvine, CA, June 1–3, 2012.

Available awards include Best Motion Picture, Dramatic Short Work or Series, Novel, Short Fiction, Other Literary Work, Graphic Story, Comic Strip, Magazine, Website, Published Illustration, and Game.

If you cannot think of five worthwhile nominees in each category, see the 2011 Recommended Anthropomorphics List on the Ursa Major Awards website for suggestions.

This is a somewhat self-serving announcement, but MiDFur the 13th has just been held in Melbourne, and I (Fred Patten) have been inducted into its Furry Hall of Fame.

MiDFur's Furry Hall of Fame members are picked by prior inductees, which include Bernard Doove, Anthrocon/Uncle Kage, 2 Gryphon, Paul Kidd, Stan Sakai, BigBlueFox, Jenner and CynWolfie.

'One-time' Philadelphia holiday convention Furstivus appears to have been a success, despite being announced a mere six weeks before it was scheduled to begin.

Lead organizer SkippyFox yesterday reported 238 attendees, with 45 fursuiters in its parade.

Furstivus took the place of the New Year's Furry Ball, which is expected to reoccur this December. The event raised $3,243 for childrens' video gaming charity Child's Play.

The state is also home to Anthrocon and the Western Pennsylvania Furry Weekend. Anthrocon was formerly held just over the road from the Furstivus hotel — itself home to 1994's Furtasticon, the first East Coast furry convention.

The Holidays are special, but everyone celebrates them differently. People bake cakes, sing songs, and others make love. They celebrate with the ones they have, the ones they lost, and find new love to share.



Some days are meant for miracles.

Some days are meant for family.



And some days you have to find your own reasons to celebrate, but any day can be a special day, even just for a moment.



Join Whyte Yoté, Rechan, Jeeves the Roo, Andres Cyanni Halden, Pyrostinger, Sanada Mutt, Fraust Dogger, Vendetta Leopard, Brathor, and Ajax B. Coriander as they tell stories alongside ten illustrations by Aggro Badger of the High Holy Days, both old and new, filled with hope, family, loneliness, and love.

Aw, that’s pretty! The book also is rated “adult readers only” for “graphic sexual situations”.

The eleven holidays featured are el Día de los Muertos, Easter, Midsummer, Thanksgiving, the 4th of July, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Halloween, Hannukah, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve. Guess which does not have its own illustration.

Dallas, TX, FurPlanet Productions, November 2011, trade paperback $19.95 (238 pages). Illustrated by Aggro Badger.

Michael W. Bard was a popular Canadian Furry author – more accurately a 'transformation' author – who wrote many online stories during the 2000s, and was a co-editor or close supporter of online magazines TSAT and Anthro. He unexpectedly died of an aneurism in March 2010 when he was only 44. His friends in the fandom have edited and published this collection of his fiction as a tribute to him.

The majority of these thirty stories are about the protagonists (usually but not always humans) turning into Furry creatures, and how this transformation affects them. Horses (regular, centaurs, unicorns, pegasi), deer, squirrels, avians. A coelacanth. A giant snail. There are a very few 'straight' Furry tales here, and an equal few that are not Furry but about traditional Celtic shapeshifters. A couple are humorous, but Bard preferred the bittersweet ending, the emotion-tuggers.

These are all well-written, and Bard’s friends have done both him and us a service by collecting them into this memorial collection; but you’d better have a handkerchief handy while reading.

Amherst, NH, Anthropomorphic Dreams Publishing, November 2011. Cover: Heather Bruton.
Trade paperback $14.95 (417 pages), Kindle or ePub $6.95.

Too much Furry fiction, written inside the fandom and in mainstream s-f, is based on the stereotype of anthropomorphized animals bred by humans to be a prejudiced-against, believed-inferior underclass; laborers, servants, sex objects, cannon-fodder soldiers – slaves – who revolt against their creators to win equality.

Geusz’s stories are more gentle, more imaginative, and more philosophical – and on an inner level, more emotive and dramatic. The Lapists are humans who believe that late 21st-century/early 22nd-century humanity has become lost in a callous, soul-deadening materialism, and who not only create a new thoughtful, more caring religious brotherhood, but transform themselves physically through futuristic biosurgery into rabbit-people as a sign of their faith.

What is it like to be an anthropomorphized rabbit-man in a world of humans in near-future America?

San Jose, CA, Anthro Press, June 2009, trade paperback $17.49 (299 pages), Kindle $8.99.

Nat Geo sees fursuiting as a fit subject for Taboo, according to this three-minute preview:

The program spins furries as "people who enjoy wearing animal costumes in their adult life", calling the behaviour "bizarre", and quoting regular media commentator Dr. Sudeepta Varma:

Furries can be considered greatly taboo because we look at people dressing up in furry costumes as child's play, and it's something that should have been left in the past, and not brought into adulthood.

Update (24 Dec): The episode is to air January 3 at 9PM Eastern, and again at midnight. [cloudchaser_s/furrymedia]

One fursuiter profiled on the show is Nuka (Courtney Plante), a social psychology graduate student at the University of Waterloo in Ontario.

Bad Dog Books has become an imprint of FurPlanet, as announced yesterday by BDB founder Alex Vance. [Ryffnah]

BDB had already contracted printing to FurPlanet, and Alex expressed hope that the move would facilitate the distribution of BDB works as e-books:

This is something I’m personally very excited about, as it’ll make our portfolio of furry fiction more convenient and accessible to modern readers.

The change is not expected to impact the release of BDB's fiction anthologies FANG and ROAR #4, but does reduce the diversity of furry publishing venues.

FurPlanet is celebrating the deal with a $5 sale on existing BDB titles, which appears to stack with an existing 10% off coupon.

Chicago radio station WBEZ's Jason Marck and Eilee Heikenen-Weiss today broadcast their experience of MFF 2011 on morning program Eight Forty-Eight. [tip: Iggy & Idlewild]

The eight-minute segment focused on the motivations for fursuiting, and featured interviews with Woody, Atara, Ford Shepherd and convention chair Takaza J. Wolf. Other topics included whether furry was a fetish, and the convention charity, which left with over $18,500 (video).

So a huge part of it is this kind of kid-like, unbridled joy. [...] The whole thing felt like good clean fun ... there's an overall air of [...] innocence, inclusiveness, belonging ...

Jason said he found the fandom by accident, stumbling across WikiFur while looking up Japanese comic books. MFF attracted 2600 fans this year, including 574 parade fursuiters.

Sweden's TV3 is currently showing Svenskars Hemliga Liv - a program on the secret life of Swedes [in Swedish], featuring segments on a group of steampunk fans, a Final Fantasy cosplayer, and a fursuiter from Örebro meeting fellow fans for the first time. [tip: Emprah]

Update (15 Dec): A streaming version is available for the next few days. The furry segments are at the start, 22:40, 28:20 and 41:14.