...

I have been battling this issue ever since I fucking started this goddamn universe. This needs to be solved soon or I will go insane.

What I Want

Anthros, furries, kemono, whatever you call them — I want them to exist in the Sevenfold somehow. I've got humans, I've got fantasy races, I've got aliens, I've got catgirls and werewolves; furries should be able to exist here, too.

The Crisis At Hand

Where the fuck do I put them.

Do I make them a variant of anifel? A super special form for therians??? Their own separate thing????? I have been flip-flopping on what the fuck they would actually be since at least 2018 and I am determined to make it end this year.

Current Options

1) They're anifel

• If I go with this option... they'd be another variant. Current variants are light (kemonomimi), medium (satyrs), and heavy (centaurs), so maybe furries would be, like, an errant variant? Maybe descended from the first batch of anifel ever made, or offshoots that got too animal-like for rich people's taste.
• Pros:
  • Has the simplest explanation, no extra worldbuilding needed.
  • Puts all the (non-transforming) animal people in one place.
• Cons:
  • Feels like it would bloat the species? Three variants is a nice, tidy number; adding more threatens to either make the species unwieldy or displace one of the other variants.
  • Looks out of place. All of the other variants look human in some way; a full furry would be jarring. I know, I already said I'd make them a weird variant, but still.

2) They're therians

• If I go with this option... they'd be a form therians could take, either their main form or a special secondary form. If it's a secondary form it would only be unlockable by extreme training or aging into it.
• Pros:
  • Won't need to learn how to draw animals.
  • "Furries are therians' main form" is technically the canon explanation as of now, as it's the last thing I wrote down.
  • Could do some "accepting yourself for who you are" symbolism with a secondary form — could even imply that's a requirement for unlocking it!
• Cons:
  • I know good and damn well I'm procrastinating on learning how to draw animals. Not making therians furries would force me to learn once and for all.
  • Having furries as the main form might lock out "feral" moments — where the therian goes through a painful change / traumatic event and forgets they're a people for a second. Could be mitigated by having the main form look more monstrous, but then I couldn't have, like, normal person furries.
  • Having furries as the secondary form mostly locks out baby / child / teenager furries. It would take a lot of time and patience to unlock it, and kids aren't known for that :p

3) They're archons

• If I go with this option... they'd just be archons, lol.
• Pros:
  • Creates a tighter connection between the Astral Realm and therians.
  • Gives the archons a consistent appearance. I haven't figured out what archons should look like, so making them furries would kill two birds with one stone.
• Cons:
  • Furries wouldn't be able to be plentiful. Archons are hardcapped at 729.
  • Archons' designs may be too busy. Depending on what else I decide on giving archons appearance-wise, their looks might end up cluttered af.

4) They're something else completely

• If I go with this option... they'd be their own thing, disconnected from the other three.
• Pros:
  • No need to screw with what's already there. Furries can have their own separate space and I won't have to break anything to make them fit elsewhere.
• Cons:
  • If I knew what to make them, I wouldn't need this damn list!

Analysis

It looks like the best things to do would be to...

1. ...make furries anifel. Looking at this list as a whole, my gripes with making them anifel were all aesthetic and surface-level, while everything else had more structural problems with it. I'll just have to deal if anything ends up weird-looking.
2. ...have therians' animal form be an actual animal, but give them a "holy shit something's wrong" form. I unearthed some more of my old notes while making this list, and those had therians having a secret, more monstrous form. I'll have to clean the info up a little, but old me was onto something.
3. ...make at least one furry archon, and heavily imply they had something to do with the modern-day therians. Probably won't properly make them until I start work on the Astral Realm's world page and need some notable people or something, but it's food for thought in the meantime.

It looks like the Great Furry Crisis has ended, but I said that the last time I thought I had it pinned down. I am going to sit on this for a few weeks before attempting to put it on the site. Would sure be fucking unbearable trying to set this in stone only for me to hate it the next day... again.