The Conflagration of PeaceWolf

The existence of FreeFurAll is in serious jeopardy, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Foxglove, the director of operations and the backbone of last summer’s convention, was unceremoniously removed from the Board of Directors on questionable pretexts. Refund requests are piling up, and the previous war-chest built up last year, about $6,000, was given away to the con’s charity just weeks before disaster struck.

People are at each other’s throats in the AWOO Association. Staff members are being kicked out on paranoia, members have been booted for having an “abusive tone,” and morale is abysmal. Most discussion and chatter has dispersed out of the main server and into individual bunker chats which resemble smokey back rooms. Just a couple months ago we were all riding high on the magic of last summer’s convention, and unbridled optimism of what the next year might bring.

The fall has been both sudden and dramatic, and it revolves entirely around the equally sudden and dramatic affairs of the convention’s chair, PeaceWolf.

What I summarize here is no longer private. It has been dragged out into the public eye by multiple parties, including PeaceWolf herself. Some time in October of this year, PeaceWolf abruptly left Foxglove, her husband of five years, to have a polyamorous relationship with two of the most notorious and ill-reputed people in the furry fandom, the adult content artists Jasonafex and Kabier, who also just happened to be the guests of honor for the 2023 convention.

The specifics and the blame for this are not important for this blog. In the now-infamous ‘whiteboard art’ Kabs left in Foxglove’s house, PeaceWolf is illustrated with the crest of a broken leash. PeaceWolf has indeed been unharnessed and set loose: Her reckless ‘unleashing’ has shocked FreeFurAll, has driven new fault lines between people that will not easily be repaired, and has started a self-immolating fire that may end up consuming the board of directors and convention itself.

People will talk about this story for years to come, rest assured of that. This sordid personal drama has even attracted mainstream media attention, but the ‘why’ is no mystery to me. To understand this, you, dear reader, must first grasp the story of FreeFurAll in July of 2022.

FreeFurAll ’22 was a dazzling success. This was a convention that gave a home to banished, ostracized and ‘cancelled’ furries. At its successful conclusion that Sunday, everyone leaving felt a high and a hope they hadn’t experienced in a long time. Those detractors who tell you otherwise either don’t want to understand it, or simply weren’t there and did not feel the vibe.

Many things happened at the con last July, but the overall zeitgeist was one of a couple hundred men, all summoned by a roughly similar mission, finally gathered together and united. In some cases, re-united. Together, the two hundred of us sent up a collective vibration that you will not find at any other furry convention, and at the center of it emerged one queen; PeaceWolf.

Coming into the convention last year, the star was 2Gryphon. Coming out of the convention, it was PeaceWolf.

And that’s not taking anything away from 2. Most of us hadn’t previously met PeaceWolf, most who arrived didn’t know her personally, but her engaging optimism was contagious, and her energy consumed literally everyone in the building. I witnessed it first hand in the registration line on Friday, and several times both on the stage and in fundraising events.

It is no exaggeration to say that the banished furries came out idolizing PeaceWolf. Many looked up to her, some put her on a pedestal. A friend of mine had his enthusiasm for FreeFurAll severely dampened that Saturday by the Furry Raiders and the publicity stunts they pulled. That Sunday, however, he seemed to forget all about it when Peace was around for the closing of the con. He ended up taking one of the two arctic foxes plushies he had with him, and gave the second to PeaceWolf, which he had been looking forward to doing the entire time. Her cheery and engaging demeanor had melted his frustration away. There were many other similar cases that day which I did not know about.

When PeaceWolf ran off on her husband, she, perhaps unwittingly, ignited a bonfire that burned all that away.

If a woman ditches her husband, absconds with a couple of drug-using philanderers and abandons her daughter, there are plenty communities in the Furry fandom willing to brush it off and overlook it: The FreeFurAll crowd is not one of them. The Christian furries, who are the real back bone this little community, were united in feeling viscerally betrayed by Peace.

PeaceWolf will not recover from this. She may be able to continue on as the chair of FreeFurAll, and the convention may still happen for subsequent years in the best-case. She may even patch things up with people, but with this corner of the fandom, she has lost her luster and that is never coming back. Returning to the woke ‘mainstream’ of the furry fandom is not an option for Peace, either: Her and Foxglove were ousted from the board of Tails and Tornadoes in 2020. Compared to the right corner of the fandom, the woke mob is far less likely to forgive, and is today mostly laughing at her misfortune.

PeaceWolf’s personal drama has stirred the religious moorings in this corner of the fandom unlike anything I have seen, and I’ve been here for awhile. Dozens of us, maybe hundreds, are all quoting the Bible and its insight into this, including, comically, JasonAfex. Peace has also set against her an army of hurt young men, who grew up in single parent households where the divorce was initiated by the mother. Enflamed by PeaceWolf’s actions, many of them are projecting their pain onto her as if she were a sacrifice.

Whatever happens from here, Peacewolf will be a falling star: Brilliant but brief, and luminescent even as she hurtles burning to the ground. Much like her performance at FreeFurAll ’22, Peace’s dramatic self-combustion burns brighter than anyone around her, and is in the process of consuming the handful of people who hung too close.

If I were advising PeaceWolf I would say this: Just get off the internet. The sooner, the better, and stay off for at least six months. As someone who has been chewed up and spit out by internet fame and drama in the past, truly I tell you: This is the stuff that ruins lives.