Blades of Furry is a webcomic by Deya Muniz and Emily Erdos.

The comic is set in a world of anthropomorphic animals, where Battle Skating is a notably popular sports mix of ice skating and martial arts. Rookie Emile Fia is an up-and-coming but insecure competitor who ends up in a match against Radu Basanko, the top battle skater out there and the last gold medalist. During the match, Emile cuts himself, sending Radu, who turns out to be a vampire, into a clumsy frenzy and granting Emile a victory, shooting his popularity and status up.

Radu and Emile start a tentative friendship once Emile agrees to keep Radu's identity as a vampire a secret.

The comic is available for free on WebToon. The comic is set to be turned into a graphic novel in 2023. The comic went in hiatus on May 2022, but returned to weekly publications on January 2024.

Tropes

• Abusive Parents: Radu's mother was controlling and pushed him and his brother apart, culminating in her permanently separating them for the sake of Radu's career.
  Emile: Full offense, I want to punch your mom.
• Aerith and Bob: The names of the character varies a lot, though that may be a case of character coming from several different in-universe backgrounds. Emile, Sue, and Sal are normal names, Mimi and Hana seem to be Japanese names (not that either is that common in Japanese either), Radu and Kochi are on the weirder side, but there are also side characters named Spice and Prima.
• Alone Among the Couples: Played for laughs with Mimi, much to their displeasure, since both Hana and Sal and Emile and Radu will become engrossed with themselves and leave them out.
• Anxiety Dreams: At the start, Emile has nightmares about being attacked by Radu after realizing he is a vampire on ice. However, as his crush on Radu increases, the dreams start shifting into Erotic Dreams. When a different one occurs, he mentions that this is a recurring issue when he is stressed.
• Bad Samaritan: Sue shows up to help Elena with her desire to go see the official Battle Skate games. This is just so she would bring Vlad to a game and help her expose Radu.
• Big Bad: Sue is the central antagonist of the comic, as Sal and Radu's stalker (with a crush in one and without in the other), out to expose Radu's nature to ruin him for a perceived slight during their last battle and a general hatred towards vampires.
• Big Good: Carla fits the closest to this role. Unlike the higher ups in GSBF, she understands the short comings of the federation and its rules, and prioritizes the well being of the skaters that are both the lifeblood of the sport and the business. She reaches out to the skaters personally (while implying she already knows about the Secret Relationship going on), warns off Sue from going through with her plans, and tries to stop the broadcast of Sue's press release as well as hide Vlad away from the public.
• Cast Full of Gay: The story focuses on a gay couple. Other major characters include the non-binary Mimi and the other gay couple, Sal and Hana.
• Color Motif:
  • Pink and pale green for Emile.
  • Red and black for Radu, a theme lightly shared with Iacob.
  • Purple for Mimi.
  • Orange for Hana.
  • An ironic case with Sue. She is associated with baby blue and mostly wears that color, but while the color is usually associated with calmness, innocence, and level-headedness, Sue is a crazy and unhinged Conspiracy Theorist.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The GBSF higher ups are very inconsistent with their own rules, and will not impose them on skaters who they believe to be too valuable for the game. Radu and Emile enjoy some security from it, being two of the stars of the sport, but the suits will also back out of even that if they don't want to be personally involved in a mess.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Radu, by extension of never having had a boyfriend before, doesn't realize the sheer amount of jealousy he'd have when dating Emile, to the point of being jealous of Mimi for, one time, making out with him before he even met Radu and playing up a potential affair for the media (which was made with the purpose of hiding Radu and Emile's relationship).
• Distracted by the Sexy: Emile zones out when Radu opens the door to him shirtless and eating ice cream on chapter 19 even though he has important matters to discuss with him.
• Early-Bird Cameo: A picture of Sal can be seen below a picture of Radu in a wall of previous 1st placers.
• Fake Relationship: Played with. To hide that Emile and Radu are in a relationship, Mimi plays up the possibility that she is in love with Emile for the media, leaving fans to speculate about their relationship, eclipsing the focus on Radu and Emile possibly dating.
• Fantastic Racism: Vampires are heavily discriminated against in this setting. As for background information, their public image was improving over the year up until a cannibalistic cult in the 90s tanked these gains and re-popularized myths about them, which led to the public mixing up fictional vampires with real life vampires (which are, in this case, just sanguivorous animals).
• Foreshadowing: The first time Emile and Radu talk about vampires, Emile shows the later an article online about the dangers of vampires written by an user called Garlic Acorn. Garlic Acorn turns out to be Sue's pseudonym, and her attempts to prove Radu's identity as a vampire turn out to be central to the plot.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: At one point, Emile asks Hana about skaters dating each other, prompting Hana to drop his phone, where the reader can see he is exchanging heart emojis with someone called Sal. This later turns out to be his boyfriend.
• Furry Reminder: Iacob is a bear, and often eats salmon.
• Gender-Blender Name: Hana is a man, but the name Hana is feminine in both Western countries and Japanese (which is implied by his last name to be the origin).
• Genre-Busting: The entire concept of battle skating makes the comic similar to quite a few shounen sports manga (especially with its mix of martial arts), but the bulk of the novel is a fairly comedic queer romance.
• Hidden Depths: In public, Radu tries to play himself as a smug and charming man with an Awesome Ego. In person, Radu is very sweet, somewhat clueless about certain things like cooking and relationships, and both Iacob and his brother refer to him as a big baby.
• The "I Love You" Stigma: Radu realizes partway through their relationship that he really is in love with Emile, but can't quite find the right moment to say it to him. Emile beats him to the punch with a very public confession of his love and their relationship amidst Sue's press conference.
• Incompatible Orientation: Sue is in love with Sal, who is gay. According to him, he tried to convince her that it's a fact, but she has taken it as an attempt to reject her. Not that she cared about it.
• Inelegant Blubbering: Radu when he meets his brother again, asking if he hates him.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Mimi is easily the most egotistical and confident character in the comic, and constantly boasts their prowess on the ice. Their favorite word may as well be “me”.
  • Sue harasses Radu online with the use of a pseudonym.
  • Hana and Mimi's last name is Kitsu, coming from the Japanese word for "fox", their species (Kitsune).
• Motif:
  • In-Universe, Radu has a vampire motif for branding purposes, the merch he sells is vampire/bat themed and his clothes has bat wings to further the comparison.
  • In the comic itself, Radu has a cherry motif. He often wears one or another article of clothing with cherry print, his favorite flavor is cherry, and the blood he drinks in juice boxes are disguised as cherry juice. Emile adopts it as well after the two start growing closer.
• Pass the Popcorn: Mimi and Iacob share popcorn and sweets as they watch the very messy press conference that Sue setup as it turns into a shouting match between her, Sal, and Emile.
• Properly Paranoid: Downplayed with Sue. After falling into a Conspiracy Theorist rabbit hole when holed up at the hospital and disgruntled with Radu for being in the finals with Sal, she comes to the conclusion that Radu is a vampire who is using his unfair power advantage to rise on the ranks. She is right that Radu is a vampire, but not about him having special powers or that his nature influenced his success in the field.
• Punny Name: Emile's coach is named Kochi.
• Refuge in Audacity: Radu hides the fact that he is a vampire, by partly hiding in plain sight, making a concept of his shows of presenting himself with a vampire/bat motif. This makes people theorizing that he is an actual vampire sound delusional.
• I Reject Your Reality: Sue seems to be incapable of digesting information she doesn't want to hear. She refuses to believe Sal is uninterested in her, let alone him being gay, it takes him completely losing it at her and yelling that he is gay while she realizes he is in a relationship with Hana for her to comprehend it and even them she exclaims how was she supposed to know he was gay, despite him being blatantly Camp Gay. Even her theories about things that are correct tend to be chock full of unnecessary, fantastical complications, like believing that Radu not only is a vampire, but that he has Super-Strength, Psychic Powers, and Mooks.
• Secret Relationship: Emile/Radu and Hana/Sal. Both are kept secret because of the GBSF against dating between competitors. While Sal has left the field, he keeps his relationship a secret in case he wants to make a comeback.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: Iacob is very quick to realize that Emile and Radu are in a relationship, but realizing it is good for Radu to finally have someone, he keeps to himself and makes space for them to date until they decide to talk to him about it.
• Shout-Out:
  • Kochi says that Mimi and Emile were "born to make history", which is the refrain for Yuri!!! on Ice's opening theme, an anime all about Queer Romance and ice skating.
  • During Emile and Radu's date in "Series 5", Emile shows up wearing a pink jacket with pale green diamond patterns. The jacket seems to be inspired by Howl's cape from Howl's Moving Castle.
• Slasher Smile: Sue is wearing an unsettling grin during her final fight with Radu.
• Slave to PR: The GSBF commission is very blatant about playing favorites and will bend or not apply its own rules to popular skater that are bringing in money. They also only care about rulkes infringements that get known by the public, otherwise, they prioritize the narrative each skater is selling. Carla pretty much spells out in chapter 74 that they have known about Radu being a vampire and being in a relationship to Emile for a while, but have not acted because he is their biggest moneymaker. They will also choose how they act regarding the public revelation of both of these based on public reaction rather than doing an actual investigation.
• Stalker with a Crush: Sue. She stalked Sal during his final year competing, trying to get together with him.
• Underdogs Never Lose: Invoked and discussed. Mimi tries to convince Emile to play up his troubled past because the public would love a story about an underdog rookie quickly rising up the ranks. Emile repeatedly fails to talk about his past in interviews by getting sidetracked, and he also doesn't think he was poor enough to use this kind of story.
• Unwitting Pawn: Elena and Vlad to Sue. Sue gifted them VIP tickets for the Series 5 games so that Elena would bring Vlad with her, and she could publicly expose Vlad and Radu's relationship with each other.
• Wham Episode: Pretty much all of the Radu vs Sue match in Series 5, but the stand out is episode 71 where Sue cuts her own hand after losing the match to make Radu's eyes go red, and publicly accused him of being a vampire and of his connection with his open vampire brother.