Guest post by Arrkay from Culturally F’d, the furry youtube channel.

With all the fire and ‘furry’ in the news, I think we should take a break from the political hardship to look at some awesome positive activity that’s been going on in the fandom. So let’s see what Furry has to celebrate lately:

“Vix N dwnq” reaches 100,000 Subscribers on YouTube

A milestone for the fandom. While not the first YouTuber who is a furry to gain the “Silver Play Button”, such as “Your Movie SucksDOTorg” and others, Rika and her channel Vix N dwnq is the first fursuiting channel to gain this level of success on her own merit. She wasn’t raised to this point by collaborating with mainstream YouTuber’s or by an aggressive marketing campaign. Instead her genuine fun in fursuit videos have gotten there organically, and she’s not alone. Majira Strawberry and Kero The Wolf are quick behind her which shows that this isn’t a single one-off event but a trend of rising Furry stars on the YouTube platform. It’s a big win for the fandom, and especially those on YouTube.

Documentary maker Eric Risher Receives an Emmy

The Emmy award that Eric received is for his editing work on “Insight with John Ferrugia: Surviving Suicide“. Eric is the mastermind behind “Furries: A Documentary” which saw some success in the film-festival racket and even got a major distribution deal. The creator has also been working on short-format online videos like this amazing “Art Jam” video, the first of many we hope.

This is just in the past few weeks of course. You could argue that Zootopia’s Oscar win counts toward fandom recognition and of course we have had writers and artists receive other prestigious awards such as Ursula Vernon’s “Digger” series getting a Hugo award. I think this is yet another sign of mainstream acceptance of our quirky fandom. In a recent Vice Media Special on the fandom, Cooper/Roach said this:

“If you look back in fandom history, people were calling Trekkies weird, Trekkies were the weird thing. Being huge into Star Trek or huge into Star Wars was freaky. Now it’s casual. It’s like an initiation process for every different fandom or different lifestyle or hobby. It’s going to go through a period where it’s made fun of for quite a while or beat to shit and then it’s going to basically be accepted”

I think we’re nearing this breaking point of acceptance in pop-culture. Big companies are noticing us. Walmart, Hot Topic and Target are all selling what are essentially cheap fursuit heads and kigurumi’s, and Chinese mass-production facilities are stealing our very fursonas out of our paws. As a fandom our press coverage has never been more positive or well informed. As Furry becomes more known and accepted, it becomes easier for Furries to share their large portfolios and get meaningful, paid work out of it. As more furries see mainstream recognition, it gets much less awkward to share your weird hobby. Everyone benefits when they can be open and comfortable and taking on the bigger and better opportunities coming from it.

It’s a good time to be a furry.

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