the Ursa Major Awards are an awards ceremony for the furry community that are held once a year to spotlight the best works that come out of the community. they are nominated and voted on by the furry community themselves.

the nominations for 2023's best works have been announced today, and the music category is currently taken up almost exclusively by an artist called Cassidy Civet, who has two solo works nominated and one album which she is a collaborator on.

Cassidy is primarily known for exclusively harassing other furry musicians who have more success than her. literally just this morning, while the nominees were being posted online, she publicly harassed another artist, GOJII, for not being "furry" enough in their musical output. she demands everyone to take her seriously as an artist and when people don't, she will harass them and make up conspiracy theories about them and even use a thinly veiled "fan account" alt to insult and bully them even further.

me and many other furry musicians feel like she has contributed to making the furry music scene a more hostile and less friendly community, and we do not feel like she represents our community and shouldn't be rewarded in favor of all the countless other furry music albums released over the past year. which is why we're boycotting the Ursa Major Awards.

some people aren't aware of what Cassidy Civet has done to people and chose not to get involved with the boycott because of that. for those people i'd like to share some screenshots and other info here. i edited this section into this post along with an update on the boycott below.

Cassidy has had a long history of harassing other members of our community. i am not writing this post as a means of digging through years worth of her online activity to find all of these posts, but me and many other furry artists can attest to her behavior and being personally attacked by her. the most recent situation should stand as an example of her repeated behavior.

there has been an ongoing feud between Cassidy and several members of the community including artists and con staff. i don't know where this feud started, but over time she has built up this idea, effectively a conspiracy theory, that there are several furry conventions that are engaging in nepotism and platforming their friends, instead of platforming furry artists like her. she sees a handful of artists who don't make the same style of animal-themed Disney-esque pop that she makes getting success in the community, and instead of being happy for them, she publicly tears them down constantly for not doing the same things she does and she comes up with these utterly fantastical stories of con staff conspiring to platform these "non-furry musicians" and excluding her from the fandom.

i'm being very generous in my description of this behavior, but what it translates to is that every time artists that don't fit her ideal of what a "furry musician" is, she publicly harasses and baits them.

the latest case of her lashing out at people, on the same day the UMA nominees got announced, included her directly calling out GOJII, Frizk, several other artists, and an independent online furry radio station called Radio Rabbit Hole. she's claiming these musicians aren't putting any effort into their music, calling their stuff "subpar music", saying they just use the fandom to generate streams without caring about it, calling on the radio station to permanently stop platforming them, and inviting other furry musicians to join in on the harassment. notice how she mentions "east coasters", hinting at the conspiratorial thinking she does where she imagines there's this big cabal of supposed non-furries who all conspire to promote eachother and steal the fandom from Real Furries™ like her.

but what's even worse is her invoking Mark Merlino's name. Mark was one of the founding members of the furry community, hosting furry and anime themed events back in the late 70s and 80s. he passed away just a few weeks ago after being diagnosed with stage 4 liver cancer. he's one of the reasons the fandom even exists at all. she's using his name, a dead man's name, to try and justify her own shitty behavior against these furry musicians. a man who can't even defend himself anymore.

however, that's not even all. there's also an account going around with the display name "#1 Cassidy Civet Fan Account!!" which is either someone very close to Cassidy in her personal life, or (what all their mannerisms and typing quirks point to), literally just Cassidy on an alt pretending to be her own fan; yes, she is that level of self obsessed. she uses this alt exclusively to say even worse things about the people she is attacking. during the beef with GOJII, this account called their music "garbage", called them a drug addict, and openly made fun of their kinks.

even if this account isn't ran by Cassidy, it's still someone who is very close to her, and she takes no responsibility to stop them.

Cassidy is absolutely not someone i want to represent the furry fandom and the furry music scene. this behavior shouldn't be rewarded through an awards ceremony like this.

check if you have been put on their 2023 Recommendations list

if so, write them an email; we've put together an example you can copypaste and add your name and works to below

send it to info@ursamajorawards.org and/or recommended@ursamajorawards.org

you can still help! you can send them an email expressing your intention to abstain from voting and participating in the Ursa Major Awards. send them an email at the same addresses as linked above, these are info@ursamajorawards.org and/or recommended@ursamajorawards.org.

their website frequently goes down and it seems like they have issues with their email server; info@ursamajorawards.org doesn't seem to work right now, but the other email address still works + i have a personal email address of one of the organizers if all else fails.

i hope that together we can give off a strong signal that hatred isn't welcome in our community and does not deserve a platform.

the UMAs have responded to my posts about this situation on Twitter, reiterating that this is purely a popularity vote and they cannot be biased. however, this isn't true, as their website literally mentions they reserve the right to remove anyone's entries if they are "[...] detrimental to the integrity and good standing of the Ursa Major Awards and the anthropomorphics fandom that those awards represent."

i have brought this guideline up with the UMA staff several times before; once in January after the 2023 Recommendations list first got posted with a call to submit more works to it. the response email i sent to them where i inquired about this guideline was left unanswered. in my email expressing my intention to boycott the UMAs, i inquired about this guideline a second time, which once again was met with no response. i replied to the tweet above asking them a third time to clarify this guideline and they still have yet to respond to that.

it appears as though the UMAs are indeed complying with artists requests to be taken off of the 2023 Recommendations list out of protest. it's a shame, really, that they'd rather do this instead of kicking Cassidy out. they've remained silent about clarifying this guideline and explaining how they think Cassidy's behavior stands in context to it. for an awards ceremony that says they represent the furry fandom and the people making it what it is today, they sure don't seem to actually care about the values and opinions of the people they claim to represent.

i can confirm plenty of artists who have sent them an email in support of the boycott and have asked their works to be taken down. in some situations, the UMA staff has complied and taken their works off. in a few other situations, artists have requested this but the UMA staff has yet to comply. i don't know whether they're just very slow in handling these requests, if they're figuring out an alternate way to deal with this situation, or if they're just being incompetent and leaving links to these works up without permission. we'll have to see what happens as the boycott continues.

once again, if you want to voice your concern or if you're an artist on their 2023 Recommendations list who wants to be taken off of it in protest, you can contact the UMA staff at:

info@ursamajorawards.org

recommended@ursamajorawards.org

the info email address seems to be out of order currently, but the recommended email address does appear to work; i'd send an email to both, just in case.