Dogpatch Press

A trial run for a convention had a behavior issue. Part 1 looked at what happened and Part 2 had sources and issues. Before publishing there was a request for comments from the organizer, then others responded. Keep in mind that some of them responded before chat screens were published and seen.

That individual was banned. We have an official rules page. Check us out https://t.co/8vlRtfYVvg

I can not speak for all individuals and what they'll do. But I do not tolerate that behavior.

Here's the official con chat. Please check the website for only con associated chats. pic.twitter.com/H6Mk7NNmme

— RadFox ACFC (@ShRadow_Fox) February 25, 2018

Radfox chatted more in private message.

The con was small and humble in nature but I consider it a success with the amount of fun had. We had approximately 30 to 35 turn out. Everyone had a good time and kept within reason there were no incidents with the hotel or their security. At this time the con felt more like a big party but I am hoping to expand. I want to run it unlike a traditional con I want to run it as more of a open-ended schedule. We had 2 scheduled events. These included shooting on the beach on Friday. The other was the big group picture on the boardwalk. Aside from that we all did our own thing we adventured along the boardwalk and enjoy the amenities of the hotel including their wonderful pool casino and restaurants… As far as partying and in your words frat party we were rather tame in comparison to other furry cons we had a no drug policy. Everyone that drank in my room at least was carded and ID’ed. Nobody was overly drunk in need of an ambulance or medical attention. As the chairman I limited myself to 1 to 2 drinks per night.

The official chat was formed by a group of friends with an idea to expand. It has a set of rules as you saw in my recent tweet. We grew it by passing out flyers and telling friends to tell friends about it and add them to the chat. As for the issue you referenced, that was an individual that crossed the line breaking the rule about no racism and I told him to stop. When he refused I banned him. I, myself, and ACFC do not tolerate that behavior hence the individual was banned. There is only one official chat associated with ACFC found on the website. The other chat we broke off from ACFC to do whatever it wanted. I am not associated with it and neither is my staff.

I named some names in the story, and asked if they would be staff or part of future events, and if he could discuss their behavior in the chats.

None are on staff. Only well known friends that will adhere to the rules and promote a positive light are staff. Whatever they do outside of ACFC’S chat is up to them. I do not follow their affiliations. However, if they break my rules and they are banned as you saw.

“Are you aware of how Jerreh came to be a member of the chat? Is he friends with members?”

I am not sure how he got in but he is not in the official one (he’d be banned after seeing this). The link to ACFC is available to everyone and anyone can add anyone. Jerreh did not post in the main chat ever. But no that is 100% not allowed or tolerated at ACFC. I do not want to speculate but if I had to guess someone added him to start drama and a fight.

A reader sent this private message.

At the time, many trolls were trying to throw up a smokescreen or use intimidation to stop the article from publishing. (Later Radfox apologized and I said there was no need, that stuff is part of my “job”.) Then the article came out and some people started connecting people in a group photo to chat activity they didn’t do.

As far as I can tell @RazzaTheKanga had absolutely nothing to do with activity in the article posted yesterday. He's in this group pic and there's angry messages at people in it. Please don't do that, it's not a good way to connect to net activity. https://t.co/Jqw3rKVbor

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) February 27, 2018

@rileyyfox was in a group pic going around with angry messages at people in it. I don't support a group pic counting as a bad thing apart from a story. I think he had nothing to do with chat activity in the story. Sorry rileyy.https://t.co/omNQmeUWm4

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) February 27, 2018

There was a lot of criticism about including Koss in the story, making bad side effects he didn’t deserve. The story info was reporting about posts from a public/official chat. I tried getting more facts by asking for comments before publishing, but didn’t get any help to decide. Two reasons for sharing the info were 1) A wider topic about behavior. 2) Being thorough and showing that events did happen when there was dispute about if they did. After the article published Koss did chat and agree to share a few extra words.

You're not racist. I'm sorry for side effects. Stuff like asking for takedown is also part of attacks I'm getting to hold back news and there's at least one source in fandom that doesn't play that. If you contact a news source its worth asking for off record chat, if they agree.

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) February 26, 2018

Reading this over.. I had no idea it got "that" bad. Errm. I'm kind of glad this happened now I suppose. More so because the people I was defending have been defended a bit in the article too. Ive never liked this behavior, in fact it always kind of made me uncomfortable anyhow.

— Koss Kelir@FWA, EF (@KossKelir) February 27, 2018

There were requests to try reducing judgement about people in the story. Koss sent this screenshot of Kazu (who is in some of the chat screens) making friends again with Trenton.

There was much more info about people improving relationships afterward and saying good things about each other that’s personal so I won’t share it.

This was one of the hardest stories to write ever on the site. It started by request of multiple tips. The amount of preparation was significant, with research I don’t ordinarily do. There was a lot of emotional concern about people in it I won’t get into (because covering a heavy issue isn’t about making friends.)  It was a big challenge to sort the info. It couldn’t easily be re-written for different approaches (like removing someone). One criticism was made about putting it out in 3 parts in 3 days, so assumptions were made after the first part. On the other hand all the questions and criticism improved the second part. Keep doing that and help me to write better (or fail better) because there’s not really anyone else doing this or a boss to rely on for it, just a fandom that I hope will keep improving.

Update

In response to @DogpatchPress regarding ACFC, I wanted to issue a statement and apology regarding the handling of an incident in our chat. I will own up to it and more importantly fix it. pic.twitter.com/58KxDuWpdL

— RadFox ACFC (@ShRadow_Fox) March 1, 2018

About this story (Continued from Part 1:)

You’re looking at sensitive info that needs calm. For example, please don’t post event group pics by themselves to criticize event goers. I don’t support that because it’s not clear which were involved or innocent from one photo. Just as importantly, some people involved with mistakes could use support now.

This follows controversies in fandom in 2017 that peaked with the closing of Rocky Mountain Fur Con. Mismanagement and abuse of tolerance killed the con. This New Jersey event seemed to be near that ballpark. But unlike RMFC, the furry in charge was more caught up in other people’s actions, so it’s not about him so much. And Trenton (the furry who was mistreated) wasn’t making a strong statement like Deo – he just asked for respect.

The story wasn’t tipped by Trenton and he never asked for help. I was watching the chat when he tried to directly solve a problem. It led to intense peer pressure on others by haters, so it wasn’t good enough by itself. I think when haters use such tactics to recruit, it’s not solved by people just keeping to themselves if they don’t get along. Also, if hate groups are trying to grow, waiting until people leave them isn’t the only way to respond. So if there are side effects from publishing a story, there already are effects from not. The best thing that can happen with a story like this is take it as a real issue, then have a calm conversation. I think 75% of fandom drama recently is just about upholding that issues are real and can’t be trolled and denied out of existence. That’s why this article is giving sources. To be honest, I wish this wasn’t going out and it will hurt people, but it would hurt to not put it out. I’d love to see change and growth come from it.

The damage incident in the story had nothing to do with racism. It was part of a wider topic about behavior (did it remind you of another con story?) There was a request for their side first. Also, the line about Graymuzzles didn’t please everyone – sorry guys (you helped found the fandom). Same to good fraternities.

Summary of Part 1:

• A small New Jersey furry group threw a party at a casino and the hotel was damaged (although it was taken care of.)
• Radfox, the organizer, then decided to make it a real convention for the future.
• The chat group for the party had a history of hateful posts.
• Trenton (who is a black furry) complained about a stereotype meme and asked for better behavior if the chat was official for a con.
• Radfox redirected offensive posting to an “anything goes” side chat, where members doubled down with racist hate for Trenton.
• Radfox was peer pressured to discourage listening to “SJW” complaints, but said he was trying to start a real event and couldn’t have racism.
• Members carried on attacking the concern and Trenton with neo-nazi stuff. About 6 were most responsible but others enabled.
• Part 1 asked: will those members be helping to found or staff a future event, and will fandom support it?

I just wanted to share this tweet:

in complete seriousness I’m so happy seeing people starting a dialogue in this fandom on drugs, alcohol, and fun

we all should not be creating an atmosphere where people who, for whatever personal reasons, don’t partake in alcohol/drugs are looked at like they have 3 heads

— glitter skunk defends pop punk (@JUNIUS_64) February 22, 2018

Is that message forcing things on people and taking away their freedom? Does it deserve hate? Or is it just being a mature adult?

Compare it to the key moment from the New Jersey furry chat with Trenton. He criticized a stereotype, and asked them to be adults. The reason is because the “Ugandan Knuckles” meme shows a coded-black character being hung on a noose. Apparently that was so unreasonable that it deserved extreme hate.

That’s the story’s Deo Moment. Are you puzzled about what’s wrong with it? (If you really need a target to hassle about this more, use me.)

Below there’s around 200 screenshots (from TWO chats that didn’t share all members) in linked galleries. Again this is very sensitive info. People in it may deserve support for distancing themselves. To name 3 – Radfox, Koss, Kazu.  If you see others in these screens, I highly recommend asking them if they support the words in them without judging until they answer.  There are active requests to withhold this info and not be judged for things people aren’t going to support.  Putting this out can have a long lasting impact against a very quick change of heart, and it’s a tough decision but I think it’s important to see what happened because it does exist in the community.

Can this be the start of a community thing where we’re all getting better?

• Hotel Damage (main chat) – Imgur gallery of screenshots

Details of damage that opened the story. A pipe is broken and floods 12 floors of the hotel, but it’s taken care of.

• Uganda Knuckles meme (main chat) – Imgur gallery of screenshots

The meme comes up and chat members attack “pussies” who wouldn’t allow it. Trenton disagrees with one post of it and is told to shut up.

• Making an anything goes chat (main chat) – Imgur gallery of screenshots

Radfox redirects offensive stuff to the side chat. Trenton talks about a better face for the con, and making more effort to be funny with jokes, instead of just posting hateful stuff. The chat has more discussion about the meme being lame and old. (Member list is withheld – some were already inside or not involved.)

• Reactions in the main chat – Imgur gallery of screenshots

Assigning another chat gets treated like an attack. They say “Fuck PC and all it stands for” and Trenton starts to get retaliation.

• Hate in the new chat – Imgur gallery of screenshots

Extreme hate starts here. They mock “uppity negros” and Radfox for listening to complaints. “Have we lost the culture? Free speech tossed to the side by butthurt PC vultures.”

• Reinforcing hate and peer pressure (1) – Imgur gallery of screenshots

More members pile on. They post zoo porn (dozens of porn posts aren’t shared here) and neo-nazi propaganda. Posts say “lynchthenigger”, “cotton pickers” and they attack “white knights” and people who want to change things. Radfox says “You can be yourself, I don’t want that to be the face of the con” and protests about the money he has spent while they attack him.

• Reinforcing hate and peer pressure (2) – Imgur gallery of screenshots

Radfox tries to reason with them about the effort he made. He asks if they can behave that badly in a regular con chat. They attack him for being “Master cuck” and not leaving the chat as it was. Radfox explains that other people left and he doesn’t want it called a con for Alt Furry or to be Furry Raiders 2.0. They blame Trenton for having a more important opinion because he is POC and act like he came in new and started “slinging shit”. Radfox says Trenton was in the chat long before others and has been an acquaintance for years.

• Reinforcing hate and peer pressure (3) – Imgur gallery of screenshots

The chat pressures Radfox to ignore “a small minority” who would be offended, and blames them for “slander”. They say “real people don’t give a shit” and to ban complainers.  They accuse Radfox of making popularity more important than “being yourself”, “letting these faggots change who you are,” looking weak and being “SJW bitchboi”. They say “Bowing to the conformity isn’t very rad” about letting “pronoun power jockies strip away the very idea that this con was founded on.” Trenton is bashed: “slave play” and “basketball American”. Radfox says his con can’t be a platform to be racist.

• Reinforcing hate and peer pressure (4) – Imgur gallery of screenshots

The chat accuses Radfox of seeking popularity and tells him not to be scared, nobody will listen to a handful of “SJW faggots”, and to ban anyone causing problems over it. “We should be allowed to say whatever we like“. They accuse Trenton of starting it and “dindunothin”.

• Reinforcing hate and peer pressure (5) – Imgur gallery of screenshots

“It’s OK because he’s black. He’s immune to all social and federal laws” – “He’s just gonna keep flinging shit and nothing is going to change” – “Not all black people are niggers, but a fuckton of them sure are.” They tell Radfox the problem can be fixed with just moderate racism so they can say what they want. “Eliminate all of the problem causing assholes like Trenton.” – “The problem really is people who’ll try to slander the group.”

• Bonus: “nigger” posts from the main chat – Imgur gallery of screenshots
• Some other posts against Trenton – Imgur gallery of screenshots

A few people in this made so much effort simply to be disrespectful assholes. Isn’t it really easy not to do that? And it was all about a spam-level meme – not important information, a controversial opinion about the world, or personal expression. How much more proof could you need for such activity being code for racists, than how much real racism happened in response to criticism?

Here’s some of the most active enablers. Be aware that other chat members may not have known their connections.

“Kaine the Salt Lord” AKA Kaine Orren / Konrad

• Furaffinity
• Furry Amino

Screenshot from Altfurry Discord

“big tiddy christian roblox gf” – Baden Sergal AKA @Sergalfag 

• Furaffinity
• Baden Sergal on Twitter
• altfurry post

this is why we need #altfurry

— (((Baden))) (@BadenSergal) September 14, 2016

Jerreh AKA Prime Breeder 

• Furaffinity
• Twitter

Poster of propaganda in the New Jersey chat sourced from terrorist group Atomwaffen Division. It’s a tightly controlled group. His posting history in Altfurry Discord ties to outside neo-nazi influence, raising questions about how far it goes.

Tweet on protected account

Screenshot from Altfurry Discord

“Legally” AKA Remy 

• Twitter
• Archive of racist tweets

Here’s why “frat” was in the title for part 1. (Where’s the fursona?)

Sam 

• Twitter

Part 3 will share feedback from people involved. A whole group had a small handful leading this activity but maybe public light can lead to better.

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon and access exclusive stuff for just $1.

 

In February 2018, Radfox, a New Jersey furry, helped a small group of friends meet for a fun weekend party in a room suite at a casino. The success led Radfox to launch a real convention for a future date. The ad-hoc trial run was named Atlantic City Fur Con.

Behind the scenes, trouble was baked in from the start. Some members seemed to consider the purpose of the con to be frat-style partying and being “offensive“. This comment came in with the original story tip:

Apparently it was bad – lots of noise complaints, there was thousands of dollars in hotel damage. Someone pushed someone into the shower which broke the nozzle or something. Caused MAJOR water damage. It went through multiple floors and into the kitchen.

Review of the Telegram group for the event found lengthy discussion about thousands in damage. A pipe was broken and flooded 12 floors of the hotel.

This is only a minor part of the story. We’ve all made mistakes and had bad luck, and it’s only money, right? It’s not bad like trashing a person.

Radfox was asked for comment by direct message on Twitter on 2/24/18. He told me: “Everyone had a good time and kept within reason, there were no incidents with the hotel or their security.” I asked him again: is it really true there were no incidents with the hotel or their security? His last reply before blocking messages:

ACFC went really well. Had a blast and we'll be back next year more offensive more dank and more loud than ever...a lot less wet hopefully

@CyberpupEigenAD pic.twitter.com/gAb19W53Wg

— RadFox ACFC (@ShRadow_Fox) February 11, 2018

And then it got worse.  After the party, the chat group (linked on the official website) kept talking about making a con.  The group was full of edgy behavior, like dozens of hits for the word “nigger” covering a 7 month span. Frequent posters appeared not to be held to rules like this, until Radfox was asked to comment for this story.

A black furry criticized a stereotype meme in the chat. He called for better behavior if it was going to be the official face for a new con. In response, he was scapegoated for racist attacks. It came from known altfurries and included hate propaganda from a neo-nazi terrorist group.

Radfox redirected the discussion to a “no holds barred anything goes” chat group that was already set up long before as an “After Dark” for the main chat.  Most of the story happened there. Hundreds of hate posts were made in there about the black furry who wanted better behavior. They called him “uppity negro”, nigger, “basketball American” and more. Radfox joined, watched the racist posting, and received intense peer pressure from members. To his credit, he told them he couldn’t support racism. They negged him as a “pussy” to discourage him from listening to complaints or trying to tone things down, and resolved to attack those who would try.

Moderate racism from @slizzzler means only Monday-Wednesday, on leap years and at furry cons pic.twitter.com/oCMxXziayI

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) February 26, 2018

Radfox was only the host and didn’t bash anyone.  Observers of this story defend him as a good person who runs inclusive parties. However he oversaw the event, and even designated a safe space for hate and used it for con business. It showed a deeper relationship to members than just people he “banned”, where the new chat was used during the hate posting to consult them about the agenda of the con. He didn’t agree with the peer pressure and wanted better behavior – at least for the public face – but let it go in private. That doesn’t solve the problem if members of this group will be involved in founding a convention.

That’s the story in a nutshell. A hotel was damaged and group members attacked a black furry for asking for better behavior. This report will look closer at who they are and what they represent, and ask: will they be attending or staffing a future event?  And will fandom want anything to do with it?

A longer statement from Radfox plus over 200 screenshots gathered for this story will be shared in next parts.

Had a great weekend and trip with @ShRadow_Fox ! Thanks for inviting me out to hang with you and go to your con! ACFC was a blast I met so many awesome people! And partied all night. Hope next year we do something again! pic.twitter.com/YbcwLgdIyo

— Riley Fox (@Rileyyfox) February 12, 2018

(Please don’t use group pics to get mad at party goers – it’s not a good way to tell who was involved online.)

Let’s back up and talk about partying. I’ve never cared for complaints about fur cons forgetting art and being taken over by costuming, dancing and drinking. Parties are fine by me, and I think there’s more art than ever. When (*some*) graymuzzles lament about how back in the day, it was more about carrying a sketchbook and quietly drawing around a table, it sounds like old fogeys wanting early bed time. Things are getting bigger and more diverse, so let the kids play.

But sometimes a thing stares you in the face, and says here is The Problem. What happened in this story isn’t about creativity and positive expression. It’s the bad kind of party influence like you see with frats that do hazing, peer pressure and vandalism. Letting loose for fun shouldn’t include spreading hate for its own sake just to flex selfish power. But that’s how this event came to have haters consulted for its purpose.

That’s not partying right:

PARTY TIP: The only thing we should hate is hate.

— ANDREW W.K. (@AndrewWK) December 4, 2014

PARTY TIP: Focus on love, partying, and bringing joy to the people around you.

— ANDREW W.K. (@AndrewWK) August 29, 2017

What set them off: A key moment was a screenshot from the New Jersey furry chat where Trenton, a black furry, criticized the coded-black Ugandan Knuckles meme. The worst part was a post with the character hung on a noose. He didn’t call them nazis, but asked them to be adults and put more effort into comedy besides just dumb offense. Apparently that was so unreasonable that it deserved extreme retaliation.

Trenton’s concern was attacked as “PC dictatorship”. When Radfox moved offensive behavior to a new chat, they said one SJW was making him bow down to conformity and “shilling”. They said it would kill free speech and stop them from “being themselves”. They said Trenton was the problem, he should be banned, and called him “dindunuffin” for ruining their fun. Bad behavior made him speak up, and they doubled down and called him a nigger because he complained.

Then here’s some of the post history of the chat they were defending from his request.

Radfox answered complaints about “SJW’s” and defended caring, because the bad behavior made about 10 other people privately complain and drop out of his group. Apparently they were reluctant to speak up. But it didn’t matter to members who piled on him for listening to “one SJW”. They wanted Trenton banned.

Banning Trenton as well as others would be a perfect example of defective “centrism”.  Compare the above posts and look at how much they got away with.  And Trenton was the problem for speaking up once? Do you think this explains why nobody else did before? Thankfully Radfox didn’t fall for it.

The most aggressive were about 6 outspoken altfurs and a dozen supporters. They attacked Trenton’s concern to the extent of filling the chat with zoo porn and hate propaganda. If you look for the source of the propaganda, it’s a neo-nazi terrorist group in the news for murder called Atomwaffen Division.

1/ Last month, we revealed Sam Woodward—the accused killer of Blaze Bernstein, a gay Jewish student—belonged to the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division.

We’ve uncovered 250,000+ messages from the group’s secret chat room. We want to show you some of them. https://t.co/fxXpKKS1ud pic.twitter.com/b6IuPu2pV4

— ProPublica (@ProPublica) February 23, 2018

An Atomwaffen member murdered a student in California and earned approval from the other neo-nazis. They planned terrorist attacks to start a race war. Group access is tightly controlled. The New Jersey furry group poster (Jerreh) is known for altfurry posting history that ties to outside neo-nazi activity.

The news report above discusses the neo-nazi propaganda and it’s maker (Denton):

“Records and interviews show Denton goes by the name Rape in the online conversations, and he appears to be involved in nearly every aspect of the organization. He shapes Atomwaffen’s ideology, chooses designs for its distinctive black-and-white posters and online propaganda, and selects the books that new recruits must study as part of their initiation.”

These posts followed it in the New Jersey furry group, showing their “ironic” behavior and sincere belief.

Radfox appears to have fallen in with a bad crew. To his credit, he didn’t make it worse by bending for peer pressure, but his friends are still pushing for retaliation. Threats have already been received to Dogpatch Press for planning this report, before it was published.

I’d love to know what enabled them to slide into fandom and act like this behavior is OK while nobody told them no so far. Radfox may not know the extent of how bad the altfurries among his friends are. Can he be supported to part ways with haters?

Parties are rad. It’s not rad to get some obnoxious, selfish assholes who don’t seem to be creating art or bringing anything positive to a community full of queer nerds. And assholes who support hate are antithetical to what furry is. These things can’t coexist. Personally, anyone who thought so would be no friend of mine.

What is this even doing near the fandom? Pick one… hate or furry.

• Part 2 will look deeper at over 200 screenshots showing the events, the perpetrators, and their ties to hate groups.
• Part 3 will share statements and threats received from people in the story.

Reminder to anyone pushing for retaliation, who look the other way about your own group: Racist is as racist does, and like Chris Rock said –

If 10 guys thinks it's ok to hang with 1 Nazi then they just became 11 Nazis. Alt right / white supremacist it's just nazis. Fuck Nazis.

— Chris Rock (@chrisrock) August 15, 2017

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Co-written by Thurston Howl and Patch O’Furr. Full disclosure – Howl and Patch have received Ursa Major awards by community vote.

Even in non-writing communities in the furry fandom, many furries are aware of the Ursa Major Awards. They’ve been around for about 17 years, have presence at cons, and each year they receive many voters. However, for all their legacy, Thurston Howl – (a furry publisher who assisted with social media and marketing for the UMAs in 2017) – has come forward with concerns involving the UMAs’ recent soliciting for donations and GoFundMe campaign.

A transparency concern.

Until now, there has been no formal budget or accounting for funding. Fred Patten, Secretary of the ALAA (Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association, which runs the UMAs), told Howl on 5/30/17: “I cannot remember that the Treasurer for the ALAA has ever submitted a formal treasury report.” Fred confirmed there were no records for 17 years, and later added:

I don’t know how much it costs to print UMA award certificates, buy frames for them, ship them to the recipients, make and ship powerpoint presentations, etc., and I don’t know how much total in donations we’ve gotten over the years…

There have been complaints in email discussion by associates.  ALAA member Bernard Doove said: “I would like a report on the finances that is more than ‘we’re broke.'” And on 5/4/17, a donor reported that they considered their donation “an unwise decision that could have been put to much better use elsewhere.” There were even fears of misappropriation, but Bernard Doove found no evidence when he looked in the bank accounts. The explanation seems to be fees of $156/year to maintain a Checking and Savings account if they have under a $300 minimum balance each.

It honestly seems like an issue of mixing small fan efforts with more formal organization, like how fandom started. ALAA Treasurer Rod O’Riley was a fandom founder who helped start Confurence in 1989. He responded to a request for comment:

The problem is not transparency — the problem is a lack of funds to be transparent about.

All donations have made their way into our bank account, and have been spent on either what they were supposed to be spent on — making and mailing out our trophies and plaques — or else were swallowed by the bank fees. ALL donations. Sometimes they took a while to get where they were going — as recently, when PayPal and our bank’s on-line system had difficulties talking to each other, for reasons I still do not understand. But eventually, they got where there were going.

Good faith is evident when many operation costs have been paid out of pocket by Rod and other ALAA members.  However, when public contribution is wanted, more formal fiduciary duty should be expected. Can we see a budget for expenses?  Will there be accounting for what is received and spent, and a report? Without such efforts, donations could be received under mistaken expectations. There should be clarity for donors reached by public appeals.

The understaffed committee.

When Howl consulted ALAA members in 2017, Fred Patten explained:

The ALAA has always been an understaffed volunteer organization. We have had to take who we can get. Rod is literally the only person who has shown any interest in handling the ALAA’s assets. We can’t afford to fire him; who would we replace him with?

Let me emphasize that the ALAA does have some real expenses, and with all donations going into Rod’s pockets and him paying for those expenses personally, we are basically trusting that his financial contributions outweigh the amount of the donations we get from other people.

On top of all of this, for con presentations of the UMAs, Rod apparently charges the ALAA for some services, such as assembling “and delivering” a Powerpoint presentation. Volunteering is work, but isn’t every con run without compensation? It seems that Rod puts in a great deal of work into both the ALAA and the UMAs, and the ALAA board allows respect for his long experience and devotion. A clear budget could help assure that to the public.

Solutions.

Here’s some steps for proper accounting to solicit more and better help:

• A finance 101 book for indie business could solve some issues such as what the IRS expects.
• Start a basic bookkeeping system – such as with Quickbooks or free Google Sheets.
• Optionally, set up a Chart of Accounts for income and spending categories.
• Make sure all income and expense transactions are tracked.
• Post a clear budget and promise annual reports.
• THEN crowdfund for expenses with full transparency.

Rod responded:

I’m actually very appreciative of the system you laid out. Other than the paperwork to fill out for the US of A (which is new now that we have a Tax ID number), much of it is things we’ve already been doing — again, when asked. We simply have to make them habitual even even not asked. Can do.

CAN YOU HELP? PLEASE COMMENT.

Let’s solve this to raise donations and make the Ursas what they always promise to be – a fandom institution to rely on, be proud of, discover with and enjoy!

Are you willing and able to volunteer skill for the understaffed needs? How about donations to offer, contingent on progress?  Specifically, there’s a wish for small, stable, solid yearly contributions out of the budgets of big cons to sustain the awards. Can any con organizers assist?

Soon, the UMA GoFundMe campaign will be reposted on Dogpatch Press and promoted with a reminder about needs that generous people can help address. Solving these problems would be a good way to help repay what Rod and associates have done for fandom since the beginning.

Additional comments from ALAA members, February 2018.

Bernard Doove:

The ALAA has needed volunteers for years, but we have lost members rather than gained, and we are all doing as much as possible to keep the Ursa Major Awards running. I’ll be donating money from my personal funds once again for the 2017 Award trophies, and I will be flying up to Queensland where the awards ceremony will be held at FurDU this year in order to run the event. The cost of that comes out of my own pocket too. I’m willing to do my bit for the cause, but we desperately need more people with the skills required to improve it.

Fred Patten adds:

Often it isn’t as much the money as the time & effort to cover the bureaucratic details. Rod has also been handling all the correspondence and financing to have our trophies made and mailed to the recipients. I don’t know exactly how much labor and money is involved, but Rod has been taking care of it alone for over 15 years now.

Since 2015, we have replaced the first UMA trophies — the framed certificates — with the lucite trophies, which are more expensive.

I have told McFarland & Co., the publisher of my Furry Fandom Conventions, 1989-2015, to donate all my royalties directly to the ALAA, but so far this has been less than $200.  Something else that I have been trying to get is some of the better-established furry conventions to regularly donate $100 a year to the ALAA. Is there any way to arrange for a regular small donation from, for example, Anthrocon or Further Confusion or Midwest FurFest or Megaplex or Biggest Little Fur Con or Furry Fiesta or Anthro Weekend Atlanta? If we could get just $100 each from some conventions, we should meet our annual budget.

Visit the Ursa Major Awards site to learn more about what they do.

Furry Ambassadors – a recognition program

 

“Furries ruin everything.” “F#$king Furries.” “Yiff in H$!!.” The furry community can face stigmatization from the mainstream – and for some, fursecution is real.  That being said, there are good people who put a lot of effort into the furry community. Between helping people financially, educationally, or by going out of their way to help keep the peace, there are good furs out there who deserve to be recognized for their efforts.

On June 1st, 2017, the Furry Ambassadors Program was initiated on Fur Affinity: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/furryambassadors. An ambassador is someone who protects people, promotes prosperity, or works for peace. Meeting one of those three duties has become a requirement for someone to be recognized a Furry Ambassador as well, as this is not a popularity contest. Being a Furry, however, is optional.

The list of Furry Ambassadors to date are as follows.

• June 2017: The chairman of Anthrocon, Dr. Samuel Conway aka Uncle Kage aka kagemushi
• July 2017: Doctor Courtney “Nuka” Plante aka Nuka-kitty
• August 2017: Aberguine from the YouTube channel Furries in the Media
• September 2017: Arrkay and UnderbiteDragon of the YouTube Channel CulturallyFD
• October 2017: Founder of the International Anthropomorphic Research Project, Dr. Kathy Gerbasi
• November 2017: Civil litigation lawyer Boozy Barrister Badger
• December 2017: DogPatch.Press, founded by Patch O’Furr/Patch_Packrat, with Furry Historian Fred Patten, and contributing editor Pup Matthias.
• January 2018: (skipped due to holidays). More is coming soon… please get in touch with them to nominate furries who deserve recognition!

Want to nominate your own FurryAmbassador or learn more?
Please visit our FurAffinity page for more info!https://t.co/vD8rwja1FS

— FurryAmbassadors (@FurryAmbassador) October 23, 2017

How are they selected and what’s the goal?

Anyone can be nominated to be a Furry Ambassador. We have a list of everyone nominated, and pick someone to be reviewed. A vetting process then occurs for the nominee. We research the person to see if they have met the ambassador requirements, as well we reach out to people who have had contact with the nominee to get any additional background and or perspective. If the nominee passes the vetting process, then a recognition is written and privately provided to the nominee to review. If the nominee consents, then at the beginning of the next month, the recognition is posted on the Fur Affinity account and posted to be shared across various art blogs and social media outlets. If however the nominee does not meet the ambassador requirement upon review, then the recognition is shelved. A shelved recognition can be reviewed at a later time when evidence of the nominee’s meeting the ambassador requirements can be identified.

So what is the benefit of being recognized as a Furry Ambassador? Does it make the person into a super fur, or do they win an award? Absolutely not. Being a Furry Ambassador is just the ability to have a title, plain and simple. Obviously, a title would not change a single thing about these members of the furry community. That being said, giving someone the prestigious Furry Ambassador title is a way to give a big shout out to highlight the positive things that furries are doing to make the fandom a better place. Help is always appreciated in the way of nominations.

As far as future plans are concerned, the number 1 goal is to simply strive for consistency, plain and simple. Ideally, with enough participation, the Furry Ambassadors program will hopefully continue with minimal to no interruptions for a very long time, as we do not see an end of good furries to review any time soon! Also, we have a few ideas on how to give rewards to those recognized as Furry Ambassadors. A Ko-fi tip jar has been set up, and funds permitting, we are looking to make buttons, or if funds permit, challenge coins to give to those recognized! http://ko-fi.com/X8X17Y8J

Who is involved?

Furry Ambassadors is administrated by PezWolf and AzarionSWE.

In the spring of 2017, a Texas furry artist by the name Pez Wolf got bit by the fur suiting bug, and started working on his own fursuit design. Having a shoe string budget and being in close proximity to fur bashers, Pez shelved the fur suiting and redirected his energy into researching the furry fandom. Pez repeatedly ran across furs who have been making great steps toward reducing the stigmatization of the furry fandom, and making the furry community more acceptable to the mainstream. Pez’s day job is working at a major financial institution that has a culture of recognition. Pez took the values he learned at work and applied them to the furry community by recognizing furs who have made contributions to the Furry Fandom. Thus the Furry Ambassador program was created.

Azarion has been a part of the furry fandom since 2013, where the kitsune has found the warm and fuzzy welcome of many new friends. Ever since Azarion discovered the negative press media coverage from main stream media sources, he has been determined to bust the typical myths about the furry fandom. In the fall of 2017, Azarion stumbled upon the Furry Ambassador program, and knew immediately that he wanted to be a part of the writing and administrating processes. Azarion is currently studying humanities with a focus on the European Continent, and learning about other peoples and cultures has always been a big interest. Being able to promote and give exposure to people that are making a positive impact on the fandom has provided him with a new field of research that’s also given him plenty of warmth and fuzz.

Note from Patch:

This is a great idea worth supporting! And what an awesome honor to even have them notice me before I noticed them. If you think other furries deserve it, that’s why you should send them YOUR nomination to spread the love.

It reminds me of this excellent thread I noticed, and one key point I’m highlighting that shows why I think Furry Ambassadors is a great idea.

Just realized I've seen the furry fandom go from a recreational clique to a legit counter-culture.

— La Renarde Écrivaine (@threetails) February 17, 2018

Sooner or later, the furry fandom will have to show a clear preference for its own art, music, costuming, etc.

— La Renarde Écrivaine (@threetails) February 17, 2018

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

Rune’s Furry Blog showcases “people within the Furry Community… their characters, life, thoughts, and beliefs”. It also covers furry issues and media. Welcome Rune! – Patch

“We’re all mad here…”

This year at Texas Furry Fiesta, 3866 fuzzbutts fell asleep and found themselves in Wonderland! This number bumped up the convention to being on the top 5 conventions list, falling just under Furry Weekend Atlanta (FWA).

This was my 2nd time going to TFF and it has always held a special place in my heart for being my first-ever con. This year was an adventure as the convention had grown so much that it was in a new venue for a brand-new experience! Because it was so fresh and so new, I decided that a type of review was in order. So, taking from my personal experiences and the comments from others, I compiled a list of things that set the convention apart, and maybe the not-so favorable things about the convention that can hopefully be fixed in the future.

So buckle up and take this trip down the rabbit-hole with me as we explore the brand-new Texas Furry Fiesta (Lonestar Wonderland)!

(Right-Left): Radar & Owen

• Growing Numbers!

I have made a habit of reading through the con-books because they always offer the most interesting information. As someone that is still new to TFF, I could not believe how small they started in comparison to other conventions. In ten years their numbers have grown so drastically when their first con only had 542 people in attendance! Crazy, right? Now here we are in 2018 and we almost broke 4,000 people… it really just blows me away!

But a growing number means a demand for a larger space… and this year the convention took place at the Hyatt Regency, right next to the Reunion Tower in Dallas Texas.  Already I noticed an improvement from last-year’s space (which I will go into detail about down below)- and it made for a much more comfortable con-experience than the previous year.Because of the larger space, I found that I had more time to actually notice what was around me. I saw a lot of familiar faces and the ‘Texas regulars’, but I also saw a lot of new faces as well. New suiters and a lot of people new to the con-scene. I saw even younger fursuiters than I witnessed last year and at ACFI and just the amount of people really shows how the fandom continues to grow, to evolve, and to include more-and-more people of varied ages, backgrounds, etc. It’s exciting. Every convention is like witnessing another moment in Furry history… and I always find myself getting excited and just feeling so humbled and honored at the thought that I get to be part of it all.

• Hyatt Regency!

The Hyatt Regency is a gorgeous hotel placed right next to the Reunion Tower in downtown Dallas. It has 28 floors, multiple rooms to rent for panel spaces (spanning across 3 floors from ground-level)- a pool, a hot tub, a bar, and even a gift shop. It conveniently attaches to the DART Train for easy travel between points, and I heard it was close to some of the most interesting neighborhoods/communities in Dallas. The layout of the hotel had mixed reviews… but I must admit that I had no trouble finding my way around. The pocket-booklet that everyone was given at registration gave an incentive to travel around the convention and locate all the most popular spots. Think of it like an interactive-tour or some sort of scavenger hunt for stamps. Upon filling your pocket-booklet with stamps from the various locations, you were given a special TFF pin at the help desk. My only complaint was that more people did not know what this part of the booklet was for, let alone that there was a prize. I found myself telling many people about it when they were wandering around lost… but again, the layout was not that bad. I feel like after wandering around for one night, I had most of the locations memorized. I did not have to refer to the map very often and only got lost one time the entire 3 days that I was there. The hotel also had various maps scattered across their walls so that people could use it for reference if they did not have their paper map (again, located in the pocket booklet).

Most panels seemed to take place on the 2nd floor and past the bar. There were multiple small rooms down a hallway located right next to a set of elevators. If anything, I could see where such a small hallway could be missed or overlooked- but at least people could go straight from the panels to their rooms. All the bigger events like the raves, concerts, and the dance competition all took place on the first floor where they could set up the stages. The Dealer’s Den was also located on the first floor.

The lobby area contained the Artist Alley as well as the Art show… and while not as convenient as other locations, at least they had a sizable space. As a fursuiter though, I will say that having the Headless Lounge in the lobby could be kind of a chore. Going up-and-down escalators when tired and/or hot… then mixing that with low-visibility seemed more like a hazard…but at least on Sunday it was moved to the 1st floor where it was more accessible. The Hyatt also had a massive outdoor area for smokers and a place where people could just cool off if they really needed to. This space was located on the first floor and conveniently placed next to the front desk.

Last year’s TFF seemed ‘cramped’ at best, with a lot of people shoving past each other and people being shoulder-to-shoulder. So, the relocation to the Hyatt really was a breath of fresh air. I found myself able to see more of the convention since I was not constantly bumping past other people, and it was a lot more comfortable walking from space-to-space. Even activities and panels were more roomy and there was barely anyone left with places not to sit. Compared to last year where people were listening to their panels out in the hallways for lack of room, this really was a treat.

As for the location of the hotel, I was not a fan. That seemed to be one of the more major complaints. While the hotel did connect directly to the DART Train, for those that were driving, getting to the hotel could be confusing. Also, there was a lack of stores and other such places around the hotel which some people heavily rely on when they travel. UberEats and other delivery services were a near necessity because the Hyatt almost seemed isolated compared to other hotels. It was also a more ‘expensive’ space… but I found that the comfort of having enough room to walk and play in suit made it worth it.

Parking for the convention was not fun and was another major complaint that I will go into detail about down below-but overall, it is something that I believe can be fixed for later cons. If I could change anything about the hotel rooms it would only be that they add in a microwave and maybe a bigger refrigerator. Overall I would say the move to the Hyatt was a smart one, and overall it was a raging success!

• Elevator-con:

After the first night, the convention was being referred to as “Elevator Hell” and “Elevator Con” because with 3800 people all running around the convention, the elevators quickly became backed up. People were trying to pile in the elevators in dangerous numbers just to get up to their rooms. I was on the 11th floor, and though my wife was fit enough to take the stairs… I was not (especially while in fursuit). Unfortunately, the inability to get up the stairs applied to several furries, and hostilities quickly grew with people trying to determine who and what had priority when it came to traveling in the elevators.

Volunteers and con-staff did eventually step in and create a line system for the elevators, but this was only taking place on the floors with panel spaces (1st and 2nd floors respectively)- this grouping helped people get up to their rooms but it did nothing for the people trying to get down. I say the worst of it was on Saturday because my friends and I could not get down from our room for the longest time, and it nearly resulted in our missing the fursuit parade.

From what I heard, a lot of it boiled down to the hotel not understanding just how insane this convention was going to be. Their lack of knowledge on the fandom and how it operates made for a lot of confusion in more than just the elevators. We occupied most of the hotel for that weekend, and naturally they had other guests as well that did not know what to do when it came to furries. They did not have enough staff to have people monitoring every elevator segment on every floor, and this is understandable. Like parking and other things…I think this just means that next year there can be room for some major improvement. Also, considering this was our first year at the Hyatt, my thoughts are that it can only get better from here.

But people really should be more considerate when it comes to elevators. If they are already packed and your room is not too far away- if you  are able to, please take the stairs! Also, have courtesy for those with luggage or for those wearing fursuits. Please let them in the elevator before you because chances are they are in the bigger hurry and have the most need to get somewhere.

(Left-Right): Escap’e,Thump the road kill possum, Rune

• Parking Problems:

Like the location of the hotel, the parking was really confusing. There were 3 parking lots where one could park for the convention, but there was not many indicators of which parking lot you were in when parking! The radish-lot was the main hotel parking which quickly filled up. It was the one located closest to the front of the hotel.

There was also the Reunion Tower parking which was the larger of the parking lots. It was the 2nd closest parking lot being right behind the main entrance to the hotel. Lastly, there were parking lots located far down the street called lots B-through-E where there were a lot of parking spaces available… but the location was so far and so isolated from the hotel that most people did not know those spaces even existed. While a lot of people got the con-rate parking for $5… there were those of us (like myself) that parked in the Reunion Tower parking (thinking it was the hotel parking) only to leave the convention with a $57 parking bill to pay. I do agree with others that while the Hyatt’s website had a list of parking rates… it was very unclear which lots were what and what prices people would actually be paying. So, this convention was not so kind for those of us actually staying at the hotel even though staying at the Hyatt was meant to be more convenient.

So the costs were not nice for those that could not get the con-rate, and the locations were not the best with people bringing in a lot of luggage. I found that the location of the parking was not kind to fursuiters nor was it kind to those with disabilities as the back of the hotel lacked ramps of any kind even though most of the parking was in the back of the hotel, and the doors lead directly into the lobby space.

There were those that said that using the DART Train was the best way to get around if traveling around Dallas, and while we did have experience with Uber, getting them to find your location at the hotel was not very successful unless you were willing to meet the Uber at the front doors. There were those that rented bicycles to get around but for most of us it was just too cold.

At least for next year I have learned what I can do better to cut down on costs. Getting con-rates for parking is a MUST, and getting to the con 2 days before the con is probably the way to go. My first night in Dallas (Thursday)- the parking lots were already full. We spent so much time circling the hotel to find a lot that was open and  that had space that we missed pre-registration by 14-minutes. So, even though we were at the convention, we could not take part in any of the early events. But, we don’t blame the hotel or the convention, and we can only do better and plan better for next year!

• The overall cost increase:

I will say that expenses have increased since TFF last year. Even with con rates and such, a lot of people ended up spending a lot more money than they intended. The Hyatt did not provide any form of free breakfast but I found that their massive servings could work if people were splitting meals. I shared steak and eggs with my wife which cost us $18, but we easily split it and still felt full. The only downside was the coffee costing so much… the drinks were not cheap so it made up most of the bill.

Bars at a hotel are never on the cheap side, so it’s often recommended that you bring your own booze. I did like the bar’s selection but found that they added a lot more alcohol than most places, and I was not sure on the quality versus the cost. There was also a $50 holding fee for those that opened a tab… and that hurt a lot of people’s bank accounts (in which I hope they got everything sorted out).

Like mentioned before, the parking was rather costly for those that were not able to get the con-rate. For those needing to use Uber or take the Dart Train… by far the train was cheaper, with Ubers ranging anywhere from $25-$65 depending on the type of vehicle you might need. Lyft was a more expensive option, and cabs are even more expensive than that. Again, there were bikes to rent, and while cheap, the weather was really cold…so riding a bike on slick sidewalks was not at all advised.

Food ended up being the biggest cost for those going to the con. While there were microwaves downstairs, they were few in number. The shops in the hotel were overpriced with small drinks costing $3 or more. Even vending machines were $2 and did not take cards which meant a trip to an ATM and paying the ATM fee if you do not carry cash. Pizza delivery and other delivery services were available- as well as services like UberEats.

The Hyatt was not cheap. A room for 4-nights and multiple beds spiraled past $700 easily. Take that into account with registration costs of $50 and then parking, food, and spending money for souvenirs, and there were people easily going past 2k for the trip. So it was much more costly than last year and that was a problem for a lot of people. But, like with all Furry Conventions, these cons are a luxury and something you need to save and budget heavily for. My wife and I made sure we brought our own food to eat (for the most part) and next year we will bring a lot more variety as well as snacks to cut on spending.

(Left-Right): Rune & Elana

• Scheduling & Panels:

I personally thought that panels this year were a lot more varied than cons-past. I found that there were more panels and more things that I was interested in personally. I also liked that they seemed to have more ‘adult’ panels than last year. But, there was a good blend of new things and familiar favorites like the McGuyver Fursuit Challenge and the Fursuit Games. I did not hear many complaints about scheduling, and everything that I attended always started on time.

There might have been some confusion for the panels that got swapped on Sunday (to new locations), but I was not affected by this personally. As far as I know, only some game rooms had issues with what times they needed the rooms versus what times the hotel let them stay in said-rooms. Also, there was a bit of a flub when it came to the closing ceremonies not reserving the room they wanted to be in… but all-in-all, everything was very organized and went very smoothly.

I found that there really was something for everyone, and my problem this year was trying to get to everything while balancing my shopping and my suiting! By far my favorite events was the Rocky Horror Picture show performance, the Dance Competition, and learning how to brew beer. I also really liked the video game room (even though I did not play anything)- I liked how much space they had this year and variety, and my friends spent a lot of time in the tabletop gaming room which they enjoyed very much!

• Food Trucks!

A solid improvement to the convention were the food trucks. It was something that TFF had in the past but that was not available for last year’s con. They were in high demand and this year we got some down the road from the Hyatt. They had a limited window, but they offered a nice alternative to eating at the hotel restaurant or having to order another pizza. My wife bought a cuban sandwich for $10 that easily fed the both of us and it was delicious!

Some people complained about the weather and the lines, but those were minor things. For the time they were there, I found them to be really convenient and very cost-effective for those on a budget!

Picture time with Zarafa!

• The Fursuit Parade!

I loved the fursuit parade this year! Like the rest of the convention last year… the parade last year at TFF was stuffy and cramped. There was not much space between the suiters and the crowd and overall it was hot and mostly uncomfortable. But this year was such a breath of fresh air!

Not only was there enough space to where 2 suiters could easily walk side-by-side with each other, but there was space between the fursuiters and the crowd! They also placed a tape trail on the ground, marking the route for the parade, and it was super helpful! The route was short-and-sweet… but it was set up to where everyone got the chance to see all the suits in all their glory. I had no complaints about any of it, I really thought that the organization, the space, the lines, and the route were excellent. So my hat (or fursuit head) goes off to whoever set it all up because they did a fantastic job! Even the room where all the suits were waiting to leave was roomy and cool which was a real treat and made for a wonderful experience!

• Compliments to Con-staff!

I did not hear a single complaint about the con staff this year. All the volunteers and the people involved were more than helpful, and with all the chaos that a new convention brings, I really feel like they went above and beyond to help people out. I utilized the help desk often and they always had an answer for my questions. Even when it came to “elevator hell” the staff stepped in and got everything under control as best as they could.

There were reports of people in suits having trouble with people touching them without permission, suits getting damaged, and other sorts of complaints in which they said the staff went above-and-beyond to help those suiters and make them feel safe in their suits again. I can not imagine the time and energy it takes in running the con, so again, I applaud the amazing staff and volunteers at TFF and everything they do so that we can have a fun and fuzzy weekend!

Shewulf got photobombed! Please tell me who this awesome suiter is!

A new venue space (much like a new convention) is bound to be chaotic. There are going to be flaws and be hiccups, but that’s all stuff that can be fixed. For some issues, that falls on con-staff and the hotel to fix… and for others, it’s a matter of learning from experiences and making better choices the next year around. But it’s fixable.

This year I followed my con-prepping tips and really tried something different. I tried to find that balance between time spent suiting, and time just walking around and taking everything in. I took less photos and videos because I wanted to remember the convention as something I lived first-hand rather than through a phone screen or camera lens.

Naturally, there were panels I missed, plans that fell through, and things I did not get to do…but those were small things that I took as they were. I did not feel as ‘obligated’ to do certain things and I did not push myself to rush to everything that looked interesting. So, by far, this was a much more relaxed and stress-free con than the previous year’s. This was my wife’s first TFF and she said it was not as overwhelming as she thought it might be. She too was able to relax and she said that she had a blast! She saw some amazing suits, and we ran around and played, and everything about it was a good time despite the massive bill that we placed on our credit cards.

So, I still say that this was a good year for Texas Furry Fiesta… and I can not wait to see how it gets better in the years to come. I’m already looking forward to next year’s theme which was revealed to be Dungeons & Dragons (tabletop RPG). So let the hype and countdown for 2019 begin!

But let me know what YOU think. Did you attend TFF? What was your favorite thing about the convention? What was your least favorite thing? What was your favorite suit that you saw? What about your favorite panel? Let me know your thoughts and opinions in the comment-section down below.

Thank you all so much for reading, and as always, I will see you all in the next blog!

This started with a guest submission by Rama the Golden Liger, a fur in Honduras. I collaborated with a lot of editing to smooth out the language and add extra info and another point of view. Fred Patten helped connect with even more furries who sent info at his request. Thanks Rama and Fred! – Patch

The Diversity of the Latin American Furry Fandom

We know how furry fandom started in the U.S.  As it grew there, the mainstream media, the internet, its memes and popular YouTubers, and other influences put the fandom within a stone’s throw for many young people. Now across borders, different cultures are experiencing a growth of furry fandom among many international influences they already have.

Latin American furries are a result of all this exposure.  The internet helped many young people get interested in the art, behavior, and culture of the furry creatures they see on the screen.  Many Hispanic furry fans are males mostly from around age 15 to their 20’s.  They came across fandom through friends, memes, anime, manga, and fan art.  There are popular YouTubers like Khazoo, who spread the term “furry” through his videos.  Of course, there was also Zootopia spreading popularity of anthropomorphic animals around the world.

Khazoo’s struggle

(Patch): International reach reminds me of studying animation under an “old master” who in 1989, helped lead a nonprofit mission to Latin American countries to reduce AIDs among street children. They traveled around to test screen educational cartoons on the side of a van. The audience was poor kids who were vulnerable to exploitation and had low access to schools. The films they were shown were life saving, and most importantly to this story, the language of cartoons was universal across borders to all levels of literacy. Of course internet users in 2018 are the main topic here.

Khazoo is an example of how furryness spreads now. This teenage Spanish-language Youtuber from Mexico may not be known to English speakers. He was born in 1999 and only uploaded his first video in 2016, but soared to 31.5K followers on Twitter and nearly 600,000 youtube subscribers so far – much more than any specifically furry internet celebrity! How did he start? According to a wiki about him (use Chrome/Google Translate), Khazoo started with general teen audience content like gaming and cartoons. While he joked about being in love with Judy Hopps, fans called him “furry” but he denied it, until finally admitting it to everyone – a story I’m sure we can all laugh about in any language! 

Latin American fandom does have old school furries; those who joined the fandom in the beginning or have been there for more than 15 years. From talking with some of them, they all got into it through comics with art from – for example – Nakira, JK Willard, Kese, or K9.  And of course cartoons and books.  Later on, the boom of the internet brought them to a community of those who loved anthropomorphic animals.

Even if furry fandom in these regions is still following development in North America, it’s already showing exponential growth; not only in the number of people who join every day, but also in the quality of fursuiters, artists, gamers, and more that have come from it.

Some examples are:

• The amazing works of Coby Wong, the fursuit maker from Brazil. She’s considered one of the most qualified makers in Latin American fandom.
• Talented artists like GAB SHIBA, Anhes, Peritian, Señor Nutria, and more from Mexico and Argentina.
• E-sports gamers like Noah Fox from Mexico, right now living in the U.S.

Coby Wong

Some of them answered questions for this article.

One furry who spoke was @NoahFFox. He discovered furry fandom when he was 16 years old.  He’s been in the fandom for four years, and since he moved to the U.S. he’s become a big Hispanic representative on Smash.  He’s recognized as the only one using the Toon link.

From the comics partnership of GAB SHIBA – Zurdo is the artist (and Cross is the writer.) Zurdo shared his story about the fandom and how things started. He joined furry fandom 13 years ago when he was 16 and a friend showed him anthropomorphic art. He sees in the Latin American furry community a big opportunity for improvement. It can get a little chaotic because it’s now populated almost entirely by youths, but as it develops you can see how much good it can do, as more join year by year.  There’s fear of the young population misunderstanding what furry fandom is; what role it serves, and that it’s not only about porn or yiff art.  But he hopes to see more and more mature furries in Hispanic fandom as it grows with time.

Gab 98
From the same who brought you UBEAR, we bring you the ubearPOOL pic.twitter.com/Q7vm3ksbxw

— GAB SHIBA (@gabshiba) January 26, 2018

*otter in spanish* pic.twitter.com/xpeYJgmB3G

— Illegal porn artist (@senornutria) June 9, 2017

(Patch): GAB SHIBA has a smart approach. The comics are frequently wordless, or posted with dual-language for wide appeal – but they don’t just stay G-rated. Some are mildy sexy and others are even explicitly adult. 

Señor Nutria at Fur Con

The same for Señor Nutria’s art. Maybe in the U.S., one may think of some Latin American countries as having conservative religious traditions or maybe not being the most tolerant, but some of his art is up there with the hottest gay yiff porn – showing that wherever furries are, they may spread a certain freedom or even counterculturally unbound expression in their creativity. 

At Further Confusion in January 2018, I met Señor Nutria on his first trip to a fur con outside of Mexico. He was super friendly but still a little shy of being on camera, so I got a pic of work in progress at his dealer table instead. He said his younger brother, a teenager, had recently gotten into the fandom from seeing furry art.

Let’s not forget Paco Panda, the popular Mexican artist already widely known in fandom. And – Dogpatch Press has generous website admin support from Mexican fandom.

Latin American furmeets and cons

Many countries already have active communities and cons where they gather to exchange experience and knowledge, and socialize with other furs of their region.  Some Hispanic countries started to do this as recently as two years ago, some four years.  They are getting bigger and bigger.  As new as furry fandom is in Latin America, you will notice how the media is interested in it and seek to interview these new animals in their lands. You can also see how many of the fursuits are hand made mostly by fans for themselves.  Only a few can afford to buy a professionally made suit.  But that’s the lovely part.  You can see the large amount of effort and love this community is putting into its hobby and fandom.

The biggest gathering right now is the Brazil FurFest. Then there’s Vidafur and Fursummer in Mexico, and furmeets in Argentina and Chile. Here’s videos, with info about the first con in Mexico below.

(2/22/18) BrasilFurfest sent appreciation and a comment: “Brazilians aren’t Hispanic. Latin America is made of countries that speak Spanish, French, Portuguese. Hispanic refers only to people who speak Spanish.” (Apart from this, many from the region probably do meet there.)

BrasilFurfest – Brazil

Vidafur – Mexico

Furmeet – Buenos Aires, Argentina

Furmeet  –  Santiago de Chile

(Patch): There was rare media coverage of Peruvian furries in 2015. The standard “furries 101” article added useful tidbits:  It was “still somewhat unusual” to see furries in Lima because their group was little more than four years old, and “the members of this tribe in our country are no larger than 100.”  It also claimed:  “In Latin America, Chile is a privileged country for furry fandom.” I’d love to know more.

Mexico’s first con – info gathered by Fred Patten.

Leonardo Davalos wrote:

The fandom is growing and very quickly and expanding to other countries, for example here in Mexico, the fandom isn’t unknown like it was before, and I’m happy that I had become one of the new members of this fandom.

In Mexico, the first meet was held in Guadalajara in 2008. It was a FurMeet called VidaFur. In 2010 it was held in Mazamitla, and in 2013 it was held in Guanajuato. In 2014 there was no event. The theme in 2017 was Furs in Space. This year it became a great convention with approximately 170 attendees. The name is now changed to Confuror, to be held in November 2018.

There were 27 staff members for the 2017 event. Some of them were Hugo Nieto, Henry J. Doe, EddBear, SoraDezWolfox, Zachary Huslion, An Ju Hope, Nathan de Xolotl, Foxhell, etc.

The activities were the following:

• Dance competition
• Drawing, traditional drawing, and sock puppet workshops
• Writing, character creation and GAB SHIBA speeches
• Fursuit Parade and Photoshoot
• Relay race
• Skating
• Lazer Wars

There were more than 30 fursuiters in the event. There was no donation. Here is a blog of one of the attendees, Koidel Coyote.

“8 years celebrating local furmeets in our city… We all finally evolved this event to a new level turning it in to a Convention.”

Growth of Latin American social networking and more

Mike Retriever of Furryfandom.es, in Madrid Spain, writes:

I’ve read that article in Spanish, from Furry Amino. Amino is like a ‘Facebook’ kind of website/platform. Latin Americans like to use it. I don’t know of any other furry groups using Amino, only Latin Americans. It has some kind of integration with smartphones or something. Honestly I don’t get very good vibes from it, it seems very commercially-driven, like Fandom Wikia. It’s a social network geared towards fandoms. I’m very suspicious of non-furry websites catered towards furries. Flayrah’s GreenReaper says of Amino Apps they’re doomed to fail because they don’t allow porn! That’s a funny fact!

(Patch): The Furry Amino group has 200,000 members, and Furry Spanish on Amino has 35,000.

In 2008, Greenreaper’s Wikifur site launched a Spanish project in collaboration with Latin American furs. It was one of the first on the wikifur.com domain in a foreign language (along with Russian), showing them on the edge of growth.

On Wikifur I found that in 2014, when Mexico’s Vidafur didn’t meet, the members collaborated in a different gathering of many fur groups in another city, Fursummer. It lists the groups as: Vidafur, GTFur, Enfurry, Urban Clawz, Bicifurros and Tonalli Furs.

How cool is that? Getting small groups from across a country to pitch in and make a bigger meet shows the DIY ethic of fandom around the world. I love that art doesn’t need one language, and look forward to sharing more about the diversity it brings. In a small way, this international conspiracy represents a nicer future for everyone. 

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Mythic Transformations, by Kris Schnee
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, December 2017, trade paperback, $7.99 (189 pages), Kindle $2.99.

This collection of fourteen short stories by Schnee is about transformations rather than anthropomorphic characters. “In this story collection, people not only encounter these beings but become them.” (blurb)

“Guardians of Mistcrown” is set in a traditional fantasy world. Darius, a young mapmaker, is looking for a new caravan route through the Mistcrown mountains. He finds a cave guarded by Zara, a griffin, who is compelled to kill anyone who comes too close to a hidden source of magical mana. Darius and Zara trade bodies, to Darius’ dismay. But he finds that there are advantages to being a powerful, flying, ageless griffin – if he can just break the wizard’s spell that binds him to the mountain cave with the mana.

“The Petlyakov-15 Amusement Engine” is for video-game geeks.

Devjn, a hard-core video-gamer, finds an old 1980s Eastern Bloc video game in a yard sale.

“He called the saleslady over from her busy work of rearranging battered stuffed animals. ‘Is this some kind of custom case on a Nintendo?’

She shrugged. ‘It was my cousin’s, but then he moved out all of the sudden. Wasted all of his time playing video games.’” (p. 27)

Devin is intrigued by the “PE-15” Cyrillic lettering, and amused by its apparent imitation of old American/Japanese video games.

“The next day he dug up a copy of ‘The Legend of Zelda’ and blew dust out of it. He smiled at the shine of the classic golden cartridge. The PE-15 came on and showed him … ‘The Legend of Svetlana’?” (p. 28)

Devin plays deeper and deeper into the PE-15. Since Mythic Transformations is a collection of stories of “people not only encounter[ing] these beings but become[ing] them”, the only question is what will Devin turn into? Hint: it isn’t a fairy-tale princess.

“Little Grey Dragons” takes place in a classic poor Russian village. Washerwoman Alexi’s brother Petrov, the blacksmith’s assistant, finds two strange warm eggs in the forest.

“They turned at a noise from the egg that Alexi had touched. It was cracking. Alexi stared as the cracks spread for several long minutes, and finally a creature’s head emerged. Grey flesh, a grey snout, and a grey eye watching her. She stood there frightened and confused. ‘Petrov,’ she whispered, ‘what is this?’

Petrov murmured, ‘Not Firebirds. Zmei.’ He stared at the other egg, obviously willing it to crack, and it began to do so.” (p. 37)

Petrov determines to use the dragons, Washer and Cinder, to make their fortunes. Alexi becomes more fearful that he is overreaching himself. Eventually Petrov becomes Cinder:

“Alexi froze. Petrov, or the dragon, or whatever they had become, reared up on powerful hindlegs and crushed a boulder. There was no Cinder, only one being that was as large as her old cottage. She stared up into a fanged muzzle that was like an echo of her brother’s face.” (p. 58)

In “Griffin Rider Venn”, Venn is a farm boy who is drafted into the town militia and ordered to guard – something. When the militia is defeated by Imperial soldiers riding dragons, Venn flees into the forest until he comes to an overgrown ziggurat.

“The light took him through twisting halls to a room so big its upper reaches were lost in the shadows, hinting at a tangle of metal cords up there. All along the walls stood glassy jars bigger than a wagon on end and covered with frost. Venn shivered. Whatever this stuff was, it came from ancient times and might do anything at all. No two legends agreed on what the ancient world had been like, except that it had ended in collapse and the forgetting of many wonders. Some of which were dangerous to learn.” (pgs. 62-63)

One of the glassy jars decants a griffin that Venn names Nev and learns to ride as an aerial battle charger. The reader won’t be surprised when Venn becomes Nev early in the story. It’s more about how he as a flying griffin combats the Imperial human-mounted dragons to save his people.

“Kentauroi” is obviously about centaurs, if you know your Greek. Cecrops and his tribe are building a new community in ancient Greece when Athena and Poseidon appear before him.

“Cecrops stood up, shaking, and dared to speak. ‘I don’t understand, glorious ones.’

Athena sighed hard enough to rustle the trees. ‘Don’t bother with flattery. You’ve already been marked by fate. You and your clan are destined to rule this land and build a mighty city. The great wet one over there, and myself, will offer you gifts. All we want is for you to choose one of us as your patron goddess.’

‘Or god,’ Poseidon rumbled.” (p. 78)

Whichever one Cecrops chooses, he is bound to offend the other one, and the Greek gods are notorious for punishing those who offend them. The title gives away what Cecrops and his tribe are turned into. But is being a powerful horse-man really such a curse?

“Ivan and the Black Riders” (reprinted from ROAR vol. 6) is a sequel to “Little Grey Dragons”. It’s also the first story in which the protagonist gets to choose what he becomes. Petrov, now the powerful Dragonlord, offers to recruit Ivan.

“The dragoness [Alexi] held the scroll up to Petrov’s left eye. The Dragonlord rumbled, ‘As I thought. My lieutenant says you’re a former mercenary with a good head on his shoulders. You wish to be young and healthy again? Then join my Black Riders.’

Ivan straightened, feeling the weight of years seem to lift from him already. He guessed: ‘The wolves outside?’

Petrov tapped dagger-length claws on the floor. ‘Exactly. You wouldn’t cross one of them, would you? You’ll have the brains of a man, and be healthier than you ever were while killing some tribe of goat-screwing bandits or bowing to your local Tsarevich bastard. You like hounds, yes? All I ask is that you become mine.’

Ivan stood in the hot cavern, staring at the dragon. He’d come this far; he’d made a sacrifice. If the Dragonlord wanted to change him, it was worth accepting. He lowered himself to his creaking knees and said, ‘Yes, my lord.’

Petrov smiled and shrank. Ivan startled. The Dragonlord had become human, a young man in flame-colored robes. He paced around Ivan, casting shifting shadows. ‘What shall I try? I’ve been experimenting with my powers. I could make you a nice stealthy black wolf, or white with powers of healing and inquisition, or red for battle. Maybe a she-wolf? They can fight. Or even a pup that I can put through a few extra years of training.’” (pgs. 88-89)

Ivan chooses a black wolf-man, to become one of the Dragonlord’s Black Riders. Later, he comes to regret his choice. What he does about it is the story.

The remaining eight stories are short, mostly under ten pages each except the last, “The Temple Beneath the Ashes”. A couple are not transformation tales, but all are fantasies. Mythic Transformations (cover by Fotokostic) is an enjoyable collection of imaginative fantasies, almost all about men (or women) transforming into something other than human.

– Fred Patten

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Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

Guest post by Arrkay from Culturally F’d, the furry youtube channel. See their tag on Dogpatch Press for more.

Yesterday we posted a sneak peek of our multi-part miniseries. It looks at animal-costume history from the basics of the mask, theatrical outfits, Hollywood rubber-suits, fandom cosplay, and our very own fuzzy army of unique performers.

Now here’s Part 1: Masks. This video explores the very idea of the mask itself and its ancient origins. Of course we focus on animal-masks, since we’re talking about Fursuit History, not just costuming in general.

This was truly a collaborative effort, so allow me to specifically point to some of the amazing furs that helped make this series not only possible, but brought the quality above and beyond just a simple YouTube blog:

• Thanks to our special guest speaker Archaesophilia for sharing some anthropological insights.
• This installment of Fursuiting: A History was co-written by show-runner Arrkay and Tempe O’Kun.
• Extra big thanks to EZ Wolf for allowing us to use some of the gorgeous convention and fursuit videography from his YouTube channel.
• Sherbert also contributed some of the Mascot footage featured.
• As always the thumbnail artwork and graphic design was handled by co-producer Underbite Dragon.
• The episode also featured music by Eluti, “Speed of Design” (youtube.com/RevamptOrchestra soundcloud.com/caero_musician) and some royalty-free Kerbal Space Program tracks.
• Our opening title animation was created by ButterscotchOtter, with theme music composed by Khord Kitty.

NEXT TIME ON FURSUITING: A HISTORY –

We look at Pantomime Animals and Skin Parts as was explored right here on Dogpatch Press, with a video dedicated to the theatre!

NEXT UP ON CULTURALLY F’d –

We aren’t just releasing Fursuiting: A History.  We’re also keeping our regular programming of furry media analysis and fandom videos. We have an all new film-space to work in, so we’re itching to get back into filming on the regular.

• Tempe O’Kun has written up a romantic analysis of the 1973’s Disney’s Robin Hood.
• We animate Arrkay and Underbite’s interview on the podcast #CreatorTown.

So SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL ALREADY!

Like this and want more? Buy Culturally F’d Merch, Support Culturally F’d on Patreon, and subscribe to the Newsletter.

Guest post by Arrkay from Culturally F’d, the furry youtube channel. See their tag on Dogpatch Press for more.

Get a load of this sneak peak for this weeks long-awaited Culturally F’d Miniseries. Inspired by a series of articles right here on Dogpatch.Press, Fursuiting: A History is an expedition straight into the uncanny valley.

This multi-part miniseries will look at animal-costume history from the basics of the mask, theatrical outfits, Hollywood rubber-suits, fandom cosplay, and our very own fuzzy army of unique performers. Stay tuned this #FursuitFriday for the first installment of our 2018 series – and make sure to subscribe to Culturally F’d on YouTube to catch new videos as they come.

The music used in the trailer is “Ascendance” by Fox Amoore.

Also check out our older, concept trailer that parodies the Westworld opening titles.

Plus you can see our version side by side with the Westworld open:

Like this and want more? Buy Culturally F’d Merch, Support Culturally F’d on Patreon, and subscribe to their Newsletter.

Bear with me, I’m going to mention that old CSI episode “Fur and Loathing” again. Few media portrayals have upset furry fandom so much. A fiction show about murder should get a license to exaggerate for entertainment, but the public somehow took it as a documentary. It made impressions that a furry convention for good natured nerd stuff, like drawing cartoons and getting dinner with friends, is a weekend long furpile for sex-mad fetishists. Other sensational media was even more responsible for spreading the impression. Of course to be fair, so are some furries.

Fursuit Modded With Power To Pull Bad Dragon Products Into Tailhole From 25 Yards Away

— Dogpatch Clickbait (@DogpatchNewsBot) February 12, 2018

This was on my mind when I found a thread about Fay V’s worst convention ever. It’s a wild trip with 78 tweets about eldritch horror pudding and orgies.

Alright, I'll open this up to followers in general because this is a really fun story.
My worst con experience EVER! (1) https://t.co/wVxCaGDYur

— Fay V (@FayVFox) February 12, 2018

With that in mind, here are some of the more unusual kinks among furries, which I’m totally not making up at all.

(Art: Bencoon)

• Vore and Rooting

Vorarephilia is a fantasy interest in having one character consume another.  Rooting is where a character like a snake goes in one entrance and out another at the same time.

• Elebating

The infamous “elevator incident” at ConFurence 8 (all the way back in 1997) memorialized this scandalous behavior. A con-goer was disturbed by a mysterious ectoplasmic substance that migrated from an elevator wall to his pants leg. Witnesses who were trusted as non-gossipers swore up and down that it was exactly what you’re thinking of. It was variously explained as mayonnaise, moisture from bathing suits from a hot tub next to the elevator, or a sneeze:

Never having heard the actual complaints (despite being on staff) I suspect part of this may have been my fault. I was fighting a head cold the first day of the con. Staggering up to my room lay down for a couple hours I sneezed QUITE messily in one of the elevators. By the time I found something to clean it up with and got back to the elevator the hotel staff (?) had taken care of the mess. – Rivercoon

• Elevator hookup

Get in an elevator at a con and ask if anyone wants a hug. If a hug keeps going until it gets to your floor, ask if they wanna get off with you (wink!) It’s a way to have a contest – the fewer floors it takes, the better the score. Now you know what to blame for elevator lines.

• Davy Crockett Style

Wearing a raccoon’s ass for a hat.

• Weaseling and Double Weaseling

That’s when one furry puts on another’s fursuit for yiffing with a partner who doesn’t know. (Obviously it requires implied consent from freaky furries who will just laugh about it). A less typical situation is when a target furry catches on to the plan and secretly switches places with another, so both partners are in the wrong fursuit. That’s Double Weaseling.  A Weasel Party is when a whole group of furries switch suits at the same time.

Besides being freaky deaky like you saw on the CSI documentary – and definitely not creative fans who share art and encourage each other to express playful sides of their personalities in innocent and joyful ways – furries also enjoy telling totally ridiculous stories. With that in mind, enjoy the below.

Challenging myths about furries and sex. pic.twitter.com/94e1Mxrjl2

— VICE Canada (@vicecanada) February 1, 2018

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Raid on Sullin, by Beryll & Osiris Brackhaus
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, October 2017, trade paperback, $15.99 (233 [+ 9] pages), Kindle $4.99.

Raid on Sullin is #2 in the Packmasters series. #1, The Relics of Thiala, was reviewed here last April. I concluded that review, “But this is space opera, not hard science s-f. This review covers the first 50 pages of the 190-page novel (cover by Darbaras, a.k.a. Dávid László Tóth). What will Cat, Ferret, Bear, Wolf, and Ana find on Thiala and the sleazy Vandal space station? Since this is space opera, expect mucho dramatic action and weapons fire.”

I’m a sucker for good space opera, and The Relics of Thiala is great furry space opera. I’ve been looking forward to the sequel, and Raid on Sullin is not a disappointment. I recommend starting with The Relics of Thiala, but Raid on Sullin has a very good “What happened so far” for those who don’t want to bother. Roughly, Cat (the narrator), Ferret, Bear, and Wolf are four bestiae, bioengineered anthro-animen in a far-future interstellar community. The bestiae are considered beneath contempt by most humans, and were enslaved by a cult called the Packmasters. The Packmasters were apparently all killed by the rest of humanity in a civil war a generation ago. Ana, a mistreated young adopted orphan, escapes with the help of Cat. They gather three other bestiae and discover that Ana has Packmaster powers, but instead of using them to dominate the others, they form a pack of friends with a telempathetic bond under Ana’s leadership, Cat’s guidance, Bear’s piloting, and Wolf’s muscle. They steal a luxury space yacht, the Lollipop, belonging to a corrupt human Senator, Viscount Tomori, and flee to Vandal, a distant space station towards the Fringe of the galaxy that is (what else?) “a wretched hive of scum and villainy”. But Tomori comes after them. The book ends with Tomori and Bear dead, and the others unsure of how Vandal’s laws will treat them.

Raid on Sullin begins with such law as Vandal has ruling that Ana is the new owner of Tomori’s property. The small pack is delighted, but unsure what to do next.

“‘So what do we do, now that we are free to go?’ Ferret asked.

We hadn’t discussed the question. What little time Ana and I had spent together, we had used to prepare her testimony and we hadn’t had a meeting of the whole pack since our victory over Tomori. It hadn’t seemed necessary as long as we hadn’t won the case. We’d be staying at Vandal a little longer to pick up some supplies, but I had no plan yet where to go next.” (p. 21)

While they are discussing on the Lollipop where to go next, and how to replace the dead Bear, they are visited by one of Vandal’s small community of free bestiae.

“The insistent knocking at the main hatch sounded again, and I looked up from my reading. […] I made a quick detour back to the lounge and picked up a blaster gun from the pile of weapons we kept on one of the coffee tables. Never wrong to have plenty of guns within easy reach. While I always had a few knives somewhere on my person, a blaster might come in handy on this occasion. I shoved the gun into the back of of my pants and made it back just before the next impatient knock.” (pgs. 24-25)

“I punched in the code for the hatch and pulled it open.

And then I stared.

I hadn’t expected anything, but the creature who looked back at me was so unexpected I just couldn’t help myself. Almost as tall as Wolf, she was only half his mass at most. She was slender to the point of seeming frail, with short tan fur and intricate white markings showing on her exposed face and hands. Elegant horns rose from her brow. Some sort of deer, I thought, but none I had ever seen.

[…]

‘Well, you sure are just as pretty a kitty as I heard,’ she commented, startling me.

If I had been a human I would probably have blushed. As it was, I knew my ears were pointing in different directions most embarrassingly. It was pointless to pretend she wasn’t getting to me.

‘I have to admit I have no idea what you are,’ I answered, unable to keep my curiosity in check.

She cocked her head, showing off the long smooth line of her neck deliberately. ‘Antelope,’ she explained readily enough, ‘more specifically, a gazelle. And you are … a house cat?’” (pgs. 25-27)

The gazelle is Ten, shown on the cover (again by Darbaras). She runs a private investigator agency out of Vandal.

“‘As it happens, I find myself in need of assistance from someone who doesn’t run and hide from big bad people. So I was wondering if maybe an exchange of services might be possible. You help me with my problem and I help you with whatever you need from me.’

[…]

She was looking to hire us. After all the gossip about us taking out Tomori, she had to believe we were some sort of mercenary crew. It made sense, really. […] The thought appealed to me. No so much the misconception of us being just another bunch of hardened criminals, but the idea of helping a fellow bestia in need. Of course, it was pretty far from the vacation we had scheduled as our next ‘mission’. Still, I couldn’t resist at least asking for some more details.” (p. 29)

It’s really bad. The Core Worlds of humans, and its Core Military, are getting around to cleansing themselves of the bestiae. The Fringe is mostly still free. But:

“‘I used to be Core Military,’ she revealed, once more catching me completely off guard. ‘Part of a special experimental unit of bestiae. We didn’t exactly like the way we were treated, so when we got the chance, we ran. Once we reached the Fringe, we split up. To hide and disappear. When I came back from my last job yesterday, I had a message from one of my former comrades waiting for me. Says Core Military had found him and he is running from them again. I want to check on him and on another friend from my old unit. See if they are okay, or need any help to relocate.’” (p. 30)

Before Cat can make up his mind, Ten and Cat are attacked by the Core Military unit that has also targeted her. Defeating them leads to the pack’s agreeing to help her.

This takes the story to about page 45. The rest of the 233-page Raid on Sullin tells of the pack’s and Ten’s rescue of her former unit from the Core Military. This leads, not surprisingly to the enlargement of the pack.

The adventure will be enjoyed by furry fans. There are many nice anthro touches in it:

“‘Will you be able to deal with having a herbivore in your pack?’ My confusion must have been obvious, as she immediately elaborated. ‘Our unit was all herbivores. The trainer told us carnivore and herbivore bestiae didn’t mix well and that carnivores were much harder to manage.’ She paused thoughtfully for a moment, a grim smile on her narrow face. ‘Not so sure they still subscribe to that last bit, though.’” (p. 46)

“‘How do you all feel about skipping that vacation and rescuing a bestia from a Core Military base?’

Wolf’s ball hit him in the head and bounced off towards the kitchen. Since we were so closely connected, I intimately sensed how he went from ‘outraged no’ past ‘must be important to him if he even asks’ to ‘why the fuck not, could be fun’. Of course he knew that I knew, and it ended with him giving me a wide grin, showing off large, sharp teeth, ready to tear some poor Core soldiers to pieces.” (p. 49)

The Core Military hadn’t named its bestiae soldiers, it had numbered them. Ten’s first squad mate who needs rescuing is Four, a bison. I will give away that Two is the most gun-crazy, untrustworthy, back-stabbing rabbit you could imagine.

Be prepared for a lot of “fuck” and “shit”, some for macho humor, as when a space pirate says:

“‘Listen up, fuckers, you all get out of the way when that mother-fucking red thing flies your way, you hear me? Any of you shoot at the fucking flying cherry and I will fucking skin you and turn your hide into a fucking hat!’

I briefly wondered how she would cope if someone suddenly removed the word ‘fuck’ from her vocabulary. She didn’t bother closing the com channel and I heard various pirate pilots check in and acknowledge their orders. I quickly came to the conclusion that ‘fuck’ was an integral part of their language.” (p. 112)

Raid on Sullin ends very satisfactorily with a new member of the pack to replace Bear, but there is a brief preview of Packmasters #3, Tomori’s Legacy, out later in 2018.

Beryll & Osiris Brackhaus are two German retirees who have written several other novels, as listed on their The Adventure of Romance website. Raid on Sullin is freer of typographical errors than many books from major publishers, but it does have British spelling like armour and programme. It also has non-standard hyphenizations like dra-wings, trea-ting, me-ans, che-ap, and joi-ning, although most readers shouldn’t object to those.

– Fred Patten

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Nearly ten thousand users last month, and rapidly approaching five thousand artist listings - looks like we're having a growth spurt!

— Commiss.io (@Commissioapp) February 8, 2018

How devoted are furries?  To commission a fursuit, they tortuously wrap themselves in duct tape, pay thousands of dollars and trust a years-long wait before getting something back. Imagine if you had to do that for a new car or stove?

The upside is direct exchange for hand-made goods, but the downside is a clunky process with a lot of invested effort and risk of fraud or failure. It works because fandom is close-knit, but there’s opportunity for better platforms to help buyer and seller. (I was posting about it in 2013). Fursuit makers seem to be niche enough to handle their own business, but freelance artists handle smaller projects much more frequently. Art commissioning sites have started up to help. Achieving scale of users may be a challenge, but they’re in a growing fandom and word is getting out.

Commiss.io first caught my notice with their banner in the dealer’s den at BLFC. Now Hunter, the CEO, joins me to chat about the service.

My impression of Commiss.io is a business aimed at the freelance art marketplace. It was started by furries but it’s for any and all users. Do I have that right? Who’s on the team?

Pretty much! Though most of us have at least some involvement in the fandom, Commiss.io was created for any and all creators. Not just anthro artists, but musicians, sculptors, and more! We’ve really seen a lot of adoption within fandoms, furry and otherwise, and we’re really happy to provide a great place for that!

Right now there are four of us that work on the project. Myself, Mark, Chris, and Nate. There are, of course, all of the great artists and commissioners on the site as well! Right now we all do a little bit of everything, from outreach, marketing, customer support, and coding.

Commiss.io is described as a “place to manage your creative shop” – helping with payments, project management, licensing, asset delivery, and more.  Is this improving on other services?

We saw a niche that needed filling. There are gallery sites, social networks, project management sites, and sites for very small freelance projects and very large ones. Together they all create a very disjointed experience, with little focus on projects in the range that many freelance fandom artists tend to focus on. As a result, creators end up with an uneven experience and the need to manage themselves across a number of platforms, without a central location to track their projects and ensure protection for sellers. When things are messy, it’s easy to get lost.

Our goal is to be a central hub, with the process fading into the background so creators can focus on creating, and clients can have a great experience.

Can you give a few numbers about how it’s doing so far?

Sure thing! Since we got started earlier last, we’ve helped creators raise over $100,000, quickly growing now to over $10,000 each month! We have several hundred active creators and many more active clients. We’ve also seen several folks move most, if not all, of their custom projects and digital downloads to the platform. Though we have a lot still to do, we take that as a sign we’re on the right track! We’ve got happy clients and happy creators.

Happy New Year! Some great stats from 2017: Creators earned nearly $90k on Commissio even though we're still in our early stages. Plus, there's around $25k in the earnings pipeline at any given time. Nice job creators, keep up the fantastic work!

— Commiss.io (@Commissioapp) January 5, 2018

If I don’t care about numbers or technical stuff, what can you say about it for an art lover? 

For an art lover, I think the best part of the site is being able to find new artists doing things you might love – and being able to get yourself into the art easier. In furry culture, you often see art lovers convert that love into art for themselves – inserting their character into the art style of the artists they love. They also connect with the artists via prints, or shirts, downloads…whatever art forms, whatever mediums a particular artist makes. And that’s awesome that the community supports each other.

That’s why we’re here – making it easier for people to support their favorite creators – and helping creators manage their business so they can focus on art.

What’s the best benefit users can get, like for time or money?

From an artist’s perspective, it helps them manage all of their projects in one place. No more digging through notes, emails, and DMs to try and find all the details, and no more trying to remember in your head everything you have to do this week. All of your projects are laid out right in front of you. So you’re definitely saving time. Plus, we support instant payouts. Funds can go from a paid invoice to their bank account in a matter of minutes!

From a client perspective, there are a lot of benefits. First, it can act as a repository for your files, somewhere where can always go back and find the original files months or even years later. Another benefit is buyer security. We don’t collect payment until the artist starts on your project. And, we help oversee disputes between artists and commissioners.

For artists, that means no more “I lost my money because of a paypal chargeback”. And, clients, that means no more “I lost my money because I never got my art”. This is a big deal for direct money savings on both sides. And so far we’ve had ZERO chargebacks. For those familiar with the art industry, or even any product sales, that’s a huge deal.

We’ve also built out a marketplace to help creators connect with clients and vice versa. I think that’s going to be big business for our creators. It’s still growing, and we’re pushing really hard to get more users so that’s sustainable and it’ll make everyone’s lives even better. But in the meantime we’ve built some great tools that really help creators and commissioners alike.

Tips are also baked into the platform as well, allowing clients to give a little something extra at the end of a project, or just give their support to a creator!

New customer info summaries are live - keep track of who's buying from you! pic.twitter.com/q2ySreMXg2

— Commiss.io (@Commissioapp) February 1, 2018

I see you have thousands of creators. Is this already a primary entrance to find an artist, and help artists to promote their work? Or is it more about bringing in clients from elsewhere?

That’s the long-term vision. When people complete the entire commissioning loop – from finding an artist – we think it’ll be awesome. But we’ve still built a system that’s very helpful for our clients and artists even before then.

We also know there’s a lot of artists who may not want that at all! They may see a lot of success promoting their presence and their products on their own sites or communities. So we’ve made it so they can put their commiss.io store in a tumblr post, on their own site, wherever they want. Anywhere they can put an iFrame, they can put their store and it’ll look just like they did it themselves. And that’s already available; you can do that today.

In the future, we hope that we’ll be able to integrate directly into external sites as well. It’s a definite goal of ours!

Can you tell me more about users? Who has adopted it and how many do you think are furries? Does it affect planning, like where you might promote?

We’ve had users adopt the service ranging in volume from a couple projects a month, to hundreds over the year. Some still invoice with PayPal, others use our tools. The vast majority of projects, though, are invoiced through the site, with positive feedback from both buyers and sellers.

The furry community has definitely been one of our biggest supporters, and we’re thrilled about that. We’re always looking to expand into other communities, and hope to support a wide variety of folks moving forward. Like any business, we’ll split our promotion between communities we already support and groups we want to encourage to adopt the platform.

What portion are actively making money through you? Do you know what stuff is doing the most business?

Well, right now we’ve chosen not to make money because we want the site to grow, and people to try it out – and we recognize that we’ve got some growth to do too. We know that building this thing up is the most important thing for our users.

Long-term, we’re looking at some different options. We’ll most likely adopt a “freemium” model, where users can opt to pay for a pro membership and avoid platform fees, or pay a small platform fee on top of standard transaction fees to help us cover costs.

But regardless, we’re be committed to keeping fees low as we move forward. We’re here to help the artistic community, not weigh people down with fees.

I’ll bet furries are curious about content standards. Are there limits for adult content? How about payment handling – do you have to be cautious of what happened with other services, like rejecting clients for having tricky content?

Of course content policies are something we take very seriously. We allow NSFW content so long as it’s properly flagged, and outline what content is restricted in our Community Guidelines. We’ll make adjustments as necessary, and work with our payment partners to ensure that we can support a wide variety of content. We have a proven track record of safe and secure transactions, and this only helps to strengthen our relationship with our providers.

Has Commiss.io had adjustments or cool opportunities since launch?

We’ve made a number of changes since we started. One thing we’ve focused on since the beginning was an ability to iterate quickly and stay flexible. We generally push a few updates to the site a week. Some big, some small, but always ensuring that we’re working hard to keep the site (relatively) bug-free and reliable. We’re constantly making adjustments based on community feedback.

Probably the coolest thing has been seeing the variety of artists coming through. There’s people doing all kinds of amazing things, and I know that diversity and quality of the art on commiss.io is only going to be even more amazing as time goes on.

5 new features?! You heard us right. We've been busy busy. Check it out in our February Creators' Update! https://t.co/Uu2cH6pzf1

— Commiss.io (@Commissioapp) February 11, 2018

What’s in the future for it?

We have a lot on the roadmap at any given point. We’ve recently launched some awesome features that build into these, like customer management tools. But here’s an idea of what we’re looking at in the near future:

• Client subscriptions to their favorite artists
• Direct PayPal support
• More robust Physical item sales (so you can sell t-shirts, pins, comics, etc. – we already have digital download support)
• Phased or installation payments for larger projects and orders

Of course, we’re always listening to our community to determine what’s coming next, too.

Do you have any other words I can share for furries who might be reading?

Check it out! Make an account, try it out. Click that little button in the bottom right and hit us up with any thoughts/suggestions/feedback, anything you want. We’re always reading that and always trying to make things even better.

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Legends of Heraldale, by Brian McNatt
Chickasha, OK, The author, January 2017, trade paperback, $13.95 (243 pages), e-book $3.95.

Legends of Heraldale is very much a stereotypical Young Adult fantasy. Its appeal will be to those who want to see a world where all the most familiar animals of mythology – gryphons (griffins), unicorns, hippogryphs, dragons, cockatrices, wyverns, sphinxs, minotaurs, salamanders, and mermaids – live, including some that I have never heard of like a rockodile and zakarians. But there are many curious aspects to it.

A Prologue tells of the last battle of the First Expansion War between the unicorns and the gryphons:

“For a moment, night turned to day, illuminating the two clashing forces. Through the woods to the canyon’s west massed the unicorns of the Avalon Empire, hooves beating the earth and snow as they galloped among the trees. From their horns streaked bolts of red magic at the many-towered fortress across the canyon, blasting chunks of stone from the high walls and tearing through the gryphon defenders.

From the fortress walls and towers the gryphons rained down flocks of arrows and crossbow bolts in return, each weapon striking true.” (p. 1)

Gryphons are usually thought of as quadrupedal. I have a hard time envisioning them shooting bows & arrows, and firing crossbows.

“Three gryphons in gold-edged leather and mail flew from the gates to meet the enemy charge. There flew a swan-gryphon, a spear as slender as his neck clenched in his talons; there flew a golden eagle-gryphon, her battle-axe as broad as many of the opposing unicorns stood tall; and at the lead flew a cardinal-gryphon, half the size of the others, her wings sheathed in feather-styled blades, a helm-like crown upon her brow.” (p. 2)

Gryphons are traditionally depicted as a combination of the front of an eagle and the rear of a lion. The concepts of a swan-gryphon and a cardinal-gryphon – later crow-gryphons and bluebird-gryphons — are intriguing; but a gryphon is supposed to look fierce and menacing, and a cardinal hardly matches that description. The idea of other birds than an eagle makes the possibility of other avian combinations irresistible; a turkey-gryphon, a vulture-gryphon; a sparrow-gryphon; a hummingbird-gryphon.

Grimhilt the cardinal-gryphon, queen of the gryphons, is mortally wounded. She is helped by her two friends to a secret chamber under the doomed fortress, where her newborn daughter is hidden:

“Trembling talons pulled away the silk blankets so that she could see the gift to the world with fresh eyes, like it was the first time all over again. The child was hardly three weeks old, her front half like a gryphon, her back half like a unicorn, a straight horn the color of polished ivory sprouting from her forehead. The child possessed her father’s shocking blue eyes, bringing Grimhilt to tears, and in time would grow up to have her mother’s vibrant red plumage. ‘A hippogryph … so beloved …’” (p. 5)

Galaxy (Gal) the hippogryph is raised in primitive Feathern Valley, part of the conquered gryphon kingdom now oppressed by the cruel unicorns. Legends of Heraldale begins when she is a 15-year-old teenager, with her friends and adoptive siblings Sascha and Siegfried, two swan-gryphon twins, and Brynjar, a golden eagle-gryphon. The unicorns keep the gryphons of Feathern Valley at the technological level of medieval serfs, while they go about in steam-driven troop transports, flying warships, and magic-powered carriages:

“Despite these dark thoughts, the sound of carriage wheels roused Galaxy’s curiosity. Ignoring Brynjar’s warning look and praying her red plumage would go unnoticed, she lifted her head enough to peer over the grass. She saw a black carriage the size of a small house draw level with them 50 feet eastward down the forest edge. No living creature drew the carriage as far as Galaxy could tell, the job done by a pair of floating crystal orbs each the size of a large pumpkin. A trio of unicorn soldiers in the white barding of the Unicorn Empire kept watch ahead and to the sides.

The carriage pulled to a stop and the doors on their side popped open. Out of the carriage hopped a palomino unicorn stallion looking on the cusp of adulthood.” (p. 13)

The unicorns are led by ruthless Lord Mordred, the personal apprentice (?) of the unicorns’ mad Empress Nova:

“The troop carrier touched down with a clank, steam hissing from vents and corner prongs losing their glow. Half a minute passed before the whole front of the carrier lowered into a ramp. Owain barely resisted backing up as six unicorn soldiers in full white barding marched down, curved steel blades two feet long mounted onto their horns.

The six soldiers divided into two lines of three to the left and right of the opening. Then He appeared, hoof-falls like thunder as he marched down the ramp. That evil feeling Owain felt grew all the stronger as this time he did step back, terrified. This stallion stood head and neck above the unicorns around him, his coat black, his long mane and tail black dotted with white, giving resemblance to the night sky. He wore no barding or caparison. Wolf-eyes shone gold with an inner light. His horn looked dull as bone.” (pgs. 33-34)

Owain is the sympathetic unicorn teenage son of the imperial governor of Feathern Valley. To give away a spoiler, Legends of Heraldale is a Romeo-&-Juliet romance, with Galaxy and Owain as the determined lovers from rival families. That’s Brynjar, Gal, and Owain on the uncredited cover.

To me, anyhow, all the mentions of technology ruin the mythological-animal atmosphere, and I don’t care if My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic does the same thing. Four-footed/hooved gryphons and unicorns using magic/telekinesis to shoot bows-&-arrows and crossbows? To operate a blacksmith’s forge? To travel in aerial warships and horseless carriages? (Try picturing the Owain on the cover riding in a magic-propelled carriage.) A raven-gryphon pirate? Gryphons of many different bird-types, and great flocks of cardinal-gryphons?

But if you don’t mind this, Legends of Heraldale is a shallow but enjoyable adventure of three anthro-animal teenagers going on an unknown journey to escape the cruel unicorn Lord Mordred and his efficient assistant, Commander Bevin. The adventure does not end as much as it comes to a stopping-place. “Galaxy and friends will return.”

– Fred Patten

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Rune’s Furry Blog showcases “people within the Furry Community… their characters, life, thoughts, and beliefs”. It also covers furry issues and media. Welcome Rune! – Patch

This week I will be attending Texas Furry Fiesta 2018. This is my 3rd convention that I have been to, and while I wrote about going to the conventions, fursuiting, and things to do at a convention (etc), I never got around to talking about the ‘prepping’.

Going to a convention takes a lot of planning and preparation. It’s crazy how much time gets dedicated to planning what panels you want to attend, figuring out the stuff you need to bring, and how much money you will need to survive for 4 days. And because I have found myself in several situations that were not exactly ‘ideal’, I figured this is the best time to reflect on the things I have learned so that others might better prepare for their Furry Conventions.

• A Furry Convention is NOT a necessity! 

I hate that this is something that needs to be said, but it’s best to get it out of the way first. A Furry Convention is a fun break from our day-to-day lives where we can feel free to express ourselves. It’s full of hugs, fun, friends, and fur (literally everywhere), but it’s not a necessity. Things like food, a water bill, a car payment… all of those things come before a Furry Convention. So please be responsible! Do not let the ‘want’ of going to a Furry Convention hurt other areas of your life. We all need to be adults sometimes and that can mean missing out on something fun. But remember… there is another Furry Convention the next year (and maybe another local one later the same year). Save your money, budget, and go to one that you can comfortably afford later. You will have a lot more fun if you don’t have to worry about the consequences of bad spending the minute you get home!

• Figure out where you are staying & reserve your rooms.

Hotel rooms where the convention is being held go FAST! They are usually sold out within the first week or sooner. So, once you find out about a convention, you need to start researching where you are going to stay. Start planning who you are going with, how many beds you would need… and if the con-hotel is too expensive, then browse hotels within the area. Remember to take into account the distance from the con hotel, the way in which you will get in-between the two, and possible parking costs. Reserve your rooms ASAP!

Remember that some hotels make you pay a small ‘holding’ cost upfront, and also that some hotels do not take out payment until AFTER your stay! So make sure you are budgeting your money accordingly so that you do not get over-drafted. If a friend has reserved the room, make sure that your name gets put somewhere on that room. This way you can not be kicked from the room and/or you avoid any issues if your friend failed to mention more people staying in the room than what is allowed. Telling the person behind the counter that you only have 2 people in your room and then having 2 other people sleeping on an air mattress is a legal issue and an overall safety risk/hazard! So please do not do it.

• Pre-Register!

Even if you do not plan to attend the convention on all of the days, pre-registering is the way to go. Unless you are attending for only one day. Pre-registering has a bunch of perks including faster lines (thus faster access to the con), pre-con activities, and other things. It usually gets you some extra goodies from the con-bags as well! But pre-registration does have specific closing dates. To remind yourself to pre-register, set an alarm or notification on your phone. Research the cost beforehand and budget to spend that money. Write a memo… do whatever it takes to remind yourself to get it done!

Not pre-registering when traveling with a group can be a hindrance to other people. Non-registered lines operate at different times, and sometimes it means you can not attend early events which your friends might have planned to go to. Sometimes this means the group might have to go to the con a day later rather than a day early depending on how their schedules lined up because now you have to go through a different and longer line. So while it seems like a small thing, depending on the con, it can make a big difference!

At one of the cons I attended- a couple of our people did not pre-register like they were supposed to. We had the opportunity to experience the con a day early and had decided to do so (as a group), but then we found out that the longer lines closed early and that if we were to go to the convention, we would have to leave the other 2 people alone in the hotel. We made the decision to stay, but waiting for them to register did strike a nerve… especially when we realized the things we had missed because a couple people did not remember. Small things can make waves when it comes to plans… so try and do everything in your power to be proactive, to plan, and be responsible. Even nudge your friends if you have to… just try and be nice about it rather than bossy or pushy.

• Just because it may be cheaper does NOT mean you should surround yourself with toxic people!

I learned this lesson my very first con. It is way cheaper to go to a convention with a bigger group. Most furries have at least 2-3 people they room with because splitting costs is usually a win-win for everyone. But just because you want to spend less money does not mean that you should put yourself in a bad/toxic situation. My first convention was still a good time. But, for all the good moments, there were just as many bad moments because of the people we were staying with.This all lead to a lot of unnecessary drama and my friend and I almost getting stranded at a hotel that was a ways from the con because people were not getting along. There were panels that were missed, a lot of time just spent sitting around, people arguing over simple things like food and when they wanted to go back to the hotel, fights about sleeping arrangements, and overall it was just BAD PLANNING because in the end, it was thought that “cheaper” would be better. No… just no. That’s not to say you shouldn’t room with friends. If you know a person and trust a person, and if you feel comfortable staying with a person, then by all means do so.

Placing yourself in a bad situation also means allowing strangers to room with you in order to cut costs. I see so many people on con group pages asking for people to room with, and while some of them work out, scams are highly likely as well. If you are willing to take in a stranger, make sure you do your homework. Interview this person, get to know them. Talk with them in-person to make sure they are who they say they are (even if this means a skype call). Take your payment up-front and send verification that they are on the room’s list. Make good business decisions like you would if you were commissioning a fursuit or some other work! Make sure you set room rules, and even write up a contract if you have to. Protect yourself, your things, and your money! If this means spending more money to be safe… then save up more money and/or wait until the next convention!

• Set aside emergency funds!

I don’t find this being pessimistic but more realistic when I say: “Not everything goes according to plan!” This just means life in general. In the time between registering for a convention and making it there, anything can happen! Even after the convention, life can happen and take you by surprise, so try and be prepared. By being prepared… I mean setting up a financial ‘cushion’ in case things go south. Maybe you miss your bus or plane, or maybe your car breaks down. Maybe an unexpected bill takes out or you miscalculated on your budget for food. Make sure you have extra money so that you can take care of whatever needs to get done so that you make it to the con safely and make it home safely as well.

• Make a packing list!

I am the type of person that seems to always forget something when I am packing for a trip. Usually it’s just small things, but I know others that tend to forget major essentials and it can cause high tensions when trying to enjoy a con. What I do is I make a packing list. I make a list marking my essentials, things like props, and even emergency things. I leave a checkbox by the items and then check them off as I pack. This is just one of the ways you can avoid forgetting things… but I understand such a method does not work for everyone.

So come up with a way that you can make some sort of list of what you need and then make sure those things make it into your luggage! Remember to take into account how you are getting to the convention when packing. When flying, you will have to follow those specific travel rules for what you can bring and what you can not bring. If riding a bus, the same thing applies. My first convention I took a bus, and I was not told that the bus only allowed one thing of luggage to be put under the bus (and it was my fault for not researching it). This lead to me having to have my other (heavy) luggage bag on my lap as well as my fursuit head while I sat uncomfortably for the next 4 hours. If you are driving with friends, try and account for how much room will be available for your things. And if traveling alone, still pack as little as you can since you never know if someone might need your help and have to make use of your vehicle. Though this has nothing to do with packing: CLEAN YOUR CAR! Especially if you are driving other people. It makes more room, it is way more comfortable, and it ensures that no one’s stuff gets dirty or damaged.

• Commit!

Commit to the things you said you were going to do. This applies especially if you are traveling in a group. Owe someone a badge? Put a notification on your phone and make the badge! Have a fursuit to finish? Manage your time and set notifications to make the fursuit! Don’t put yourself in a position where you are doing things last-minute and you have to break promises because you were not responsible and organized… this is a bad way to start a convention.

In saying that, don’t overload yourself when you know you have a bad habit of getting burnt out, overwhelmed, etc. Life happens, yes… but when you cause your own problems, it can make for serious issues when planning cons with people in the future… especially when you can not come through with things you promised to do. Don’t bite off more than you can chew, fulfill your obligations to friends and to customers alike. Make time to do things, even when you’re feeling lazy. Send money when you promised to send money, pay for the things you promised to pay for rather than backing out last minute. Don’t volunteer for something you might not be able to do because no one likes this type of person. Be responsible, be reliable, be honest… and commit!

• Remember you are not OBLIGATED to take care of anyone for their mistakes!

While I say to “commit”, in the same likeness… you should not be held accountable to fix someone else’s mistake. If you have to take care of a cost because someone did not budget properly, make sure that person pays you back. If someone didn’t bring something, you are not obligated to get them the things they need. Even if this means they can’t spend money to buy that t-shirt or that plushie, that is not your fault. That falls on them, not on you. Do not sacrifice your fun and comfort because someone else did not plan as they were supposed to. You are not obligated to take care of anyone else other than yourself. Especially if you can not afford to take care of other people.

• Remember that this convention is about YOU having a good time.

Don’t let anyone else ruin your fun. Don’t want drama? Don’t get involved in it. Someone trying to bring you down because they are down? Don’t let them drag you into their problems. Don’t let people guilt you into helping them with anything… and don’t let them tell you what you are going to do at a convention. This is YOUR time that you paid for. Do not let someone else run the show and ruin your fun. You’re free to break off from your friends if you wanna go to a panel they are not interested in. You are free to not go to that dance they want to go to because you don’t like dancing. You are free to drink (but if they say no alcohol in the room then respect that) or to not drink despite what others are doing. This time and this con is for all furries, but for all furries to have fun in their own way!

• Read over con and hotel rules!

Convention rules are usually additional to hotel rules, so make sure you read over both. This can concern anything from alcoholic beverages to smoking and prop use. Make sure you read and understand what you can do and what you can not do. I know a common rule is that you are not allowed to sleep in the public hotel spaces or in the con space… this is for safety reasons and it can get you banned from the con for a day after multiple offenses. Also, some hotels allow alcohol, but only in designated areas (same goes for smoking), so make sure you read those rules. Since conventions tend to have themes to them, people like to dress up and bring props matching the theme… but there are rules as to what props are allowed and what are not allowed. If the rules do not specify something, proceed with caution but never assume it is allowed. I like to call hotel staff if I have a question and if the convention managers have not gotten back to my e-mails about such questions after a certain amount of time. Failure to follow rules can lead to being banned from a convention and even the hotel itself. Pleading ignorance does not get you off the hook either. So read up on the rules ahead of time.

• If you’re in a group, go over the con schedule and plan out panels together!

One thing my buddy likes to do is to have everyone read over the con schedule and say what panels they are interested in. When you are traveling with a group, it’s okay to split up during the convention… but I will say that spending the convention with friends is a lot more fun. So, by planning out who wants to go to what panel, it usually ensures that you’re never alone and you have someone to go and see things with. Sometimes people might get interested in a panel they never thought about before because so many friends want to go to it. So it can never hurt. I find that planning these things before a con leads to a lot smoother of a con experience! This also can be good so that you can map out times when people are not busy and you can all meet up to go eat or check out the Dealer’s Den.

• Create room rules and set other boundaries BEFORE the con!

It’s not very nice to get into a room, start settling in, and then suddenly get slapped in the face with rules. This is especially annoying when you might have already had plans for things you wanted to do. Now, if you’re rooming by yourself, this is not an issue… but, if you are rooming with other people, make sure you set rules and boundaries BEFORE you make it to the convention. This means laying out the rules on who gets room keys, where people are sleeping, what the rules about bringing over friends is, and anything else you feel needs to be covered. Often at Furry Conventions this can usually mean bringing over friends, dates, having alcohol in the room, and/or having a room party. Again, remember to follow hotel rules at all time!

• Have a backup plan for EVERYTHING!

Like emergency funds, life happens… and it does not always concern money. I’m talking more in terms of transportation and things of that nature. People and machinery alike can prove to be unreliable at times, and life happens, so please have a backup plan for everything! If your friend can’t take you to the convention, then make sure you have a plan for that. Maybe there is a bus you can hop on or someone else you can call. You won’t have to panic if you have a plan A-B-C for if things go awry. Also if your car breaks down, the same thing applies. You and your group should have a bunch of emergency backup plans in case anything gets crazy.

• Make sure you are making healthy changes BEFORE going to the con!

At a convention you will hear the 6-2-1 rule: At least 6 hours of sleep, at least 2 meals a day, and you have to bathe once per day at the minimum! But you should be making healthy changes before the convention, especially if you are a fursuiter. At a convention you are most likely going to eat like garbage. You will be having so much fun that you will go hours upon hours without food; then you will grab the first thing you see because you are starving!

Dehydration is a real concern at conventions… but you don’t just wanna start being hydrated when you come to the convention. Start drinking more water the week prior. Try and eat as healthy as possible the week before a con so that when you are eating nothing but junk at the convention you might not feel terrible afterwards. Give your body a head-start into what is going to be the craziest, most fun weekend of your life!

• Don’t be afraid to do something differently next year…

If your arrangements that you made this year do not work out, or if you learn some things that you can do better to ensure you have a better time at the next convention… then don’t be afraid to do it. Do not be afraid to not room with that friend you have because maybe you guys don’t agree on room rules… and don’t be afraid to say you’re not driving everyone next year. This all comes back to the convention being about you having fun.

Conventions have their stressful points, but they shouldn’t be remembered as stressful. They shouldn’t be remembered for all the things that went wrong but for the amazing memories that you made while there. So learn from your experiences and use that knowledge to improve on how to tackle future conventions… even if other people might not agree with you.

Sometimes my advice may seem a little harsh… but I promised myself to only ever be realistic and honest, even if the truth might hurt. You may or may not like this advice, think it sounds a bit too depressing, or whatever… but the tools are there if you choose to use them.

Conventions are never perfect… but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. Sometimes the funniest and best things stem from a mistake or mishap. So even if things are not 100%, it does not mean you are bound for a bad time. But, the smoother something can sail, the better.

So, I wish you all the best with your convention preparations! Captain, Escap’e, Rune, Pitch, and other awesome peeps will be wandering around Texas Furry Fiesta just waiting to say hello! I personally like hugs and photos so don’t be shy to come up and have a word (or chirp) with me!!!

Thank you all for reading, and I will see you all in the next blog

P.S= Furry Con season means Stolen fursuit season! You can see my tips and advice for protecting your fursuits

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

The War for the Planet of the Apes novels.

War for the Planet of the Apes: Revelations, by Greg Keyes.
London, Titan Books, June 2017, paperback, $7.99 (336 pages), Kindle $7.99.

War for the Planet of the Apes: The Official Movie Novelization, by Greg Cox.
London, Titan Books, July 2017, paperback, 7.99 (318 pages), Kindle $7.99.

Both novels are “Based on the screenplay written by Mark Bomback & Matt Reeves; based on characters created by Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver”. Revelations is advertised as “The Official Movie Prequel”. They were marketed to be released one month before, and upon the release of the movie on July 14, 2017.

It may seem pointless to review two movie tie-in novels months after the movie has come and gone, but the lasting value of literature is whether the novel is still worth reading after its movie is gone. These two War for the Planet of the Apes novels hold up well.

War for the Planet of the Apes: Revelations is a bridge between the 2014 Dawn of the Planet of the Apes movie and the 2017 War for the Planet of the Apes movie – or between their novelizations.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: The Official Movie Novelization, ended ten years after the Simian Flu has killed almost all humans. The Ape Village of intelligent chimpanzees, orangutans, bonobos, and gorillas that had escaped from San Francisco, under the leadership of Caesar, the chimp, is starting to expand just as the few human survivors in San Francisco are also starting to expand. Their discovery of each other leads to a tense confrontation. Both Caesar and Dreyfus, the human leader, want peace, but they are sabotaged by Carver, a human hothead, and betrayed by Koba, Caesar’s chimp lieutenant who hates all humans. Dawn ends with Dreyfus dead and Caesar barely surviving his fight-to-the-almost-death with Koba, while the Apes are trying to establish a new village while facing a new group of human soldiers coming from a military base with advanced weapons.

War for the Planet of the Apes: Revelations starts soon after Dawn ends. It has a lovely line two pages in:

“‘Forest,’ he grunted. ‘He’s gone. Snap out of it. I need you to spot the shooter.’” (p. 6)

You try grunting that line.

Revelations begins with warfare among the human survivors of the plague. The pertinent paragraph is:

“But what he [Colonel John McCullough] was fighting was not another army, just a bunch of people with guns. It was the difference between disciplined Roman troops and sword-waving barbarians, and in under half an hour the area was secure.” (p. 8)

McCullough is with the remains of the U.S. Army, in the north around Seattle. He has spent a decade in the fighting against one militia after another. Now he is leading an expedition to San Francisco, where it all began, where human survivors have radioed that they are at war with intelligent apes.

The ape community is in shambles. Koba is dead, but he had grievously wounded Caesar and killed Ash, the best friend of Blue Eyes, Caesar’s older son. Blue Eyes had looked up to Ash as the better leader. All the Apes are traumatized by Koba’s attempt to kill Caesar and anyone who opposed him. “Ape not kill ape”, but Koba did. Maybe worse, Koba had attacked the humans that Caesar had made peace with. The humans do not understand the apes’ politics, and consider all the apes as having betrayed them. McCullough and his troops, including his son, John jr., arrive in San Francisco not knowing what they will find.

War for the Planet of the Apes: Revelations is two stories with several substories, switching back and forth. One is of the warfare around San Francisco. The two main forces are McCullough’s human soldiers and Caesar’s apes. The humans underestimate the apes at first, but McCullough cannot get his commander in Seattle to send him any reinforcements. The general is ready to write San Francisco off:

“‘It’s a parochial conflict,’ the General said [over the radio]. ‘And I see no overarching danger.   Our resources are better spent keeping the peace we’ve made and trying to contact other pockets of civilization. We sent you down there to find out what was going on, and we outfitted you with the resources to mop up a decent-sized problem. If you deem that problem too big to solve with the resources you have – well, then it is within the scope of your orders to return to base.’

‘Are you recalling me, sir?’

‘I am not,’ Prescott said. ‘I’m just asking you to use your judgment. Which would be easier – to continue fighting these animals, or to move the human survivors to a safe zone?’” (p. 97)

McCullough feels the apes are a serious potential danger to humanity and it would be a mistake to leave the San Francisco area to them to build up their ape army. He continues the warfare against the apes. Caesar is hard-pressed to save the ape colony; plus some of Koba’s followers plot to overthrow him. While Caesar leads the resistance against McCullough, centering on the Golden Gate Bridge, Caesar’s mate Cornelia leads the resistance in the ape community against Koba’s followers.

The second story is of a three-ape expedition Caesar sends out. Caesar realizes that Blue Eyes, his son and natural successor, has no military talent; and that if anything should happen to him, the apes need a strong leader, not a stunned figurehead. To get Blue Eyes out of the way, Caesar sends him with Rocket (chimp), his second-in-command, and Ray (orangutan) to explore down to the south, to learn if there is any human colony there.   Blue Eyes, Rocket, and Ray have adventures with earthquakes, stampeding buffalo, and wolves, before encountering humans and an even greater danger.

War for the Planet of the Apes: The Official Movie Novelization is set two years after Revelations. Blue Eyes and Rocket have returned to the ape community, which has been fleeing through the Redwood forests north of San Francisco. They are pursued by McCullough and his troops, who have gone rogue from the U.S. Army and now call themselves just the Colonel and the Alpha-Omega Army. Although they are determined to kill all the free apes led by Caesar, they have accepted the remains of Koba’s rebels, led by the gorilla Red, as their slaves. Something the Colonel does turns Caesar into his personal enemy. The Colonel says that he is on a holy war against the apes, and War for the Planet of the Apes: The Official Movie Novelization does have the emotional feel of a holy war.

War for the Planet of the Apes: The Official Movie Novelization, like Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: The Official Movie Novelization, has more narration and less dialogue than its prequel:

“Caesar signaled the others to proceed cautiously as the apes dismounted and approached the building, their rifles drawn. They had only taken a few steps, however, before Green Coat bolted from behind one of the adjacent outbuildings and dashed through the front entrance of the central lodge. An ornate glass door, which had somehow survived the collapse of civilization, slammed behind him.

The other apes looked to Caesar. He nodded silently and raised his rifle higher as he led Rocket and Luca up the front steps and through the front door, while Maurice and the girl waited outside, pressing their faces against the frosty door pane. They had come this far already, Caesar decided, and he had no desire to leave an armed stalker unaccounted for; they needed to find out who this was – and what must be done about him.” (p. 108)

Fans of the Planet of the Apes movies will want The Official Movie Novelization as the completion of the film trilogy, but Revelations is better as a novel.

– Fred Patten

• Buy War of the Planet of the Apes Revelations on Amazon
• Buy the Official Movie Novelization on Amazon

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

In their own words.

Part 1 gives background about how the Altfurry hate group works. Now here’s the screenshots.

• Chat log file: https://my.mixtape.moe/gjdlqx.txt
• Load file into the reader: https://dht.chylex.com/build/viewer.html

The source is “Altfurry Mead Hall,” a Discord server that grew after the neo-nazi march at Charlottesville.  It documents months of chat from late 2017, specifically from their private channel for trusted staff. That filters out memes and filler and shows what they’re really about. The server is run by Casey Hoerth/”Len Gilbert”, AKA “The Furred Reich”. These chat logs add to a long mission of hate shown by previous leaks from his Altfurry Discord group.

Screenshots are duplicated in imgur galleries for another reading option. One user named Kilton had their ID blanked when this leaked.

“Len” (Casey) is paranoid about vetting and ranking staff, with applications, personal vouching and a point system to judge their cult devotion. (Isn’t it funny when they claim to be about free expression with no gatekeeping?) 

A supposed 18+ group rule is bent to allow a minor into their most trusted staff channel. (Political loyalty comes before anything else.)

Len gives a mental map of associated altfur servers. Newcomers are funneled into different groups so they can be groomed or played against others.

Hardcore political racists are specially welcomed after many left because furries were too gay and centrist. Len makes attracting them fundamental while keeping it from public notice. It shows that altfurry is inseparable from hate, and members are complicit. (Quote: “Gas the kikes.”)

Insecure Len has an enemy list with Dogpatch Press on top as “worse than @Deotasdevil”. (Wow, he hates something more than a vocal woman.)

Obsessed. Can you imagine this chud trying to be funny? It couldn’t be funny on purpose, but his failure would be. He couldn’t possibly be flaming enough.

Midwest Furfest got them extra active, but they didn’t meet because Deo leaked a meet plan. (In altfur parlance, that’s “cucked”.)

The chat talks about Foxler being an embarrassing association for them, especially with being implicated in the chemical attack on Midwest Furfest in 2014, making it hard to sugarcoat what they do.

They’re relieved that FBI attention on Foxler hasn’t gotten worse and led to arrests yet. 

They discuss Dionysius trying to break up the Furry Raiders and how it’s good for them because the Raiders are a mess all the time. (Pot, kettle…)

They wanted an interview on the politics channel Louder with Crowder to make altfurry look “good” by accusing Antifa furs and FA of working together.

They have a dream to make a right wing con and turn the tables on “commies” by making them walk on eggshells. (Only if there was funding from the failed idea of member fees paid to Dionysius.)

Grooming tactics include filtering curious newcomers through a sham site that pretends to look neutral.

Trolling tactics include scheming to take over old abandoned FurAffinity accounts to make sockpuppets with histories.

There’s lengthy focus on trolling a chat group interview with Deo, trying to push members to fight each other. They discuss trolling tactics on and on and on. They want to look normal and reasonable by avoiding talking like nazis, making their enemies look mad and crazy, then stealthily pretending to be lefties and attacking popufurs to make others hate lefties.

This is what a hate group does. It has nothing to do with being friends, making and sharing furry art, or being in a fandom. Fandom is nothing more than their target for trolling, politics, grooming and recruiting.  Altfurry has no concept of a community. They’re selfishly fixated on “power” in it.

To them, power means popularity – with zero understanding about how having friends comes from being a friend. They don’t even make creative stuff that catches notice. They want to be cool and proud of something without doing any work for it, motivated by jealousy. Racial supremacy just makes a lazy dividing quality that’s innate and can’t be taken away. Their main activity is hating people who get in their way. The stigma that comes from such bad behavior makes them more and more thirsty for attention, while they seek authority to force fandom to accept them unconditionally.  It’s the most cliquish thing ever, and the saddest part is they convince each other that they’re right.

The defining feature of this group isn’t being hateful trolls – it’s being ultimate losers. They will only grow up by being exposed but avoided until they leave it.

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

Background of a hate group.

Fandom is about imagination, but it’s made of people with a real community. Having a healthy community means discussing issues in it like grown-ups, from politics to risks. That includes happenings in the wider culture that affect a subculture full of loveable college-aged oddballs. These stories connect to “Altfurry”:

• White Supremacists Are Targeting College Students ‘Like Never Before’
• The alt-right are targeting disgruntled white male lefties to join their movement

The alt-right is a racist fringe group that defines itself in opposition to others (like the mainstream, minorities, and people who aren’t racist). It can’t exist on its own, so they try to creep in, recruit and manipulate for power. Like two-faced chameleons, they wear an outer face to hide a disturbing inner narrative. They sugarcoat it, but the end goal is hateful bigotry. You can see through it when you know what “cryptofascism” is and how it works.

In their own words.

@AamnaMohdin: Alt-right fascist groups, having "drained the market of libertarians” and outed themselves as racist primitives at Charlottesville, desperately try to rebrand as hip and liberal.

Yeah, that trick didn't go so hot here in the furry fandom.https://t.co/uN1P5fayox

— Tempe O'Kun (@TempoWrites) February 4, 2018

2’s next ignorant “joke”: people can’t be racist unless they wear pointy white hoods.

Hmm, why do racists conceal their faces?

Knowing the alt-right agenda is the key to understanding how altfurries infest fandom:

• Fandom makes a captive audience who might be groomed by people like themselves (often playing on insecurities of young males).
• Fandom acceptance and LGBT membership makes a cover; altfurries use it to protest that they can’t possibly be fascist because they are *token identity*. (That’s historically false: 1930’s Nazis had gay leaders until they took power and killed them – and their Japanese allies weren’t white.)
• They may claim to be “centrist” or “diverse” while their actions disprove it. Some things, like racism, don’t have other sides. To sugarcoat the agenda, they may syncretize (merge and co-opt) pseudo-liberal concerns, like for workers or gay rights. But it’s short-term and selective for loyal followers.
• Altfurries are considered losers by the alt-right. Fandom is where they want a “safe space”, but their hate keeps them on the fringe here too. Even so, they still try to re-rebrand for wider acceptance. People driven by insecurity and malice aren’t thoughtful enough to get why it will never work.
• Fandom is crowdsourced and peer to peer. The altfurry fringe adopts that process for grooming, despite absurd contradictions of mixing furry and hate. Most of it involves convincing each other, unlike a cult of personality with a single leader. It looks like fandom superficially, but behind the scenes they do rank members by trust and devotion to racist and fascist belief. They keep higher decision-making separate from fresh meat they target.
• Memes are their main activity that resembles furry creativity, but in a derivative, parasitic way. It’s propaganda for grooming and attacking.

More details are covered here: How White Nationalism Courts Internet Nerd Culture. *

Redpilling

* For those unfamiliar with the term “red pilling” it is a cult like indoctrination, programming a new member that what the group promotes is the only real enlightened truth and that these truths had been kept hidden from them by evil forces controlling society.

Spreading hate since the 1990s as a Burned Fur and altfur.

A special target for altfurry hate is critics who interfere with grooming and indoctrinating. They’re labeled SJW’s – “social justice warriors” – in other words, healthy people who care about their community and won’t give a free pass to bigotry. (That describes most of fandom.) Vilifying opposition serves recruiting, and makes a watered-down version of “jews control the world”, so altfurs can conveniently scapegoat targets who react to being attacked.

Their “art”: mindless cliches, grooming, attacking, and nothing but pushy politics.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS: In Part 2, a deep dive into Altfurry finds explicit, nauseating evidence.

This post is split for amount of screenshots.  The source is “Altfurry Mead Hall,” a Discord server that grew after the neo-nazi march at Charlottesville. It documents months of chat in their private channel for trusted staff, which filters out memes and filler and shows exactly what they’re about. The server is run by Casey Hoerth/”Len Gilbert”, AKA “The Furred Reich”. These chat logs add to a long mission of hate shown by previous leaks from his Altfurry Discord.

• Chat log file: https://my.mixtape.moe/gjdlqx.txt
• Load file into the reader: https://dht.chylex.com/build/viewer.html

You will see:

• “Len” (Casey) is paranoid about vetting and ranking staff, with applications, personal vouching and a point system to judge their cult devotion. (Isn’t it funny when they claim to be about free expression with no gatekeeping?)
• A supposed 18+ group rule is bent to allow a minor into their most trusted staff channel. Political loyalty comes before anything else.
• Len gives a mental map of associated altfur servers. Newcomers are funneled into different groups so they can be groomed or played against others.
• Hardcore political racists are specially welcomed after many left because furries were too gay and centrist. Len makes attracting them fundamental while keeping it from public notice. It shows that altfurry is inseparable from hate, and members are complicit.

• Insecure Len has an enemy list with Dogpatch Press on top as “ten times worse than @Deotasdevil”. (Wow, he hates something more than a vocal woman.)
• Midwest Furfest made them extra active, but they didn’t meet because Deo leaked a meet plan. (In altfur parlance, that’s “cucked”.)
• The chat talks about Foxler being an embarrassing association for them, making it hard to sugarcoat what they do. They’re relieved that FBI attention on Foxler hasn’t gotten worse and led to arrests yet. They discuss Dionysius trying to break up the Furry Raiders and how it’s good for them because the Raiders are a mess all the time. (Pot, kettle…)
• They wanted an interview on the politics channel Louder with Crowder to make altfurry look “good” by accusing Antifa furs and FA of working together.
• Their insecurity-fueled dream is to make a right wing con and turn the tables on “commies” by making them walk on eggshells.
• Grooming tactics include filtering curious newcomers through a sham site that pretends to look neutral.
• Trolling tactics include scheming to take over old abandoned FurAffinity accounts to make sockpuppets with histories.
• There’s lengthy focus on trolling a chat group interview with Deo, trying to push members to fight each other. They discuss trolling tactics on and on and on. They admit wanting to look normal and reasonable by avoiding talking like nazis, making their enemies look mad and crazy, then stealthily pretending to be lefties and attacking popufurs to make others hate lefties.

This is what a hate group does. It has nothing to do with being friends, making and sharing furry art, or being in a fandom. Fandom is nothing more than their target for trolling, politics, grooming and recruiting.  Altfurry has no concept of a community. They’re selfishly fixated on “power” in it.

To them, power means popularity – with zero understanding about how having friends comes from being a friend. They don’t even make creative stuff that catches notice. They want to be cool and proud of something without doing any work for it, motivated by jealousy. Racial supremacy just makes a lazy dividing quality that’s innate and can’t be taken away. Their main activity is hating people who get in their way. The stigma that comes from such bad behavior makes them more and more thirsty for attention, while they seek authority to force fandom to accept them unconditionally.  It’s the most cliquish thing ever, and the saddest part is they convince each other that they’re right.

The defining feature of this group isn’t being hateful trolls – it’s being ultimate losers. They will only grow up by being exposed but avoided until they leave it.

Screenshots are coming in Part 2.

Life is short. @AltFurryBlocker is your ticket out of #altfurry bullshit. pic.twitter.com/6I2w1tvmcv

— Tempe O'Kun (@TempoWrites) November 14, 2017

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

It's heating up on the track@TheFFCollective vol.1#FashionFurs pic.twitter.com/WIJHoJ8Ep8

— deep fried gundam (@cckatoo) January 30, 2018

Part 1 of this week’s writing about fashion looked at age and fursuiting as a statement. For the following interview with the Furry Fashion Collective, members Cyan, Sol, Yazoo, and Steezy joined me for a group chat about why they came together and what they’re working on.

Cyan:
Hi Patch. We invited a few members of the F/F Collective board into this chat. Thanks for considering our project newsworthy.

Patch:
Totally cool. I got the impression there’s a physical book happening with it?

Sol:
Yessir!

Patch:
I dig it – is it about furries-who-like-fashion, or fashion-for-furries? Like clothes + furries, or more specifically anthro costuming?

Steezy:
Furries who like fashion. Sometimes fursuit fashion.

Yazoo:
It’s an amalgam of both the fashion savvy and those interested in fashion, whether it’s fandom inspired or otherwise.  So there’s a very nice intersection of people looking for fashion who are in the fandom and creators that provide for the fandom.

Sol:
Its also about giving insight for furries who might want to get into fashion.

Patch:
Oh yay, inspiration. Honestly that would even help me, I love making cool outfits but know nothing about the kind of stuff that people who go to school for the design know.

Looking mad scuzzy in my new @HyenaAgenda threads pic.twitter.com/2bxWjvkLUq

— Assistant Senpai (@MintyChocoPanda) January 19, 2018

DOG x HYENA pic.twitter.com/lvUlZ9DFsA

— A Dog On Quest (@S0LARDOG) January 12, 2018

Sol:
Exactly! We know not everyone understands fashion and it can be intimidating. One of my hopes is that this book (hopefully THESE books) will make fashion look less scary and more inviting.

Patch:
What kind of stuff will the insight cover?

Cyan:
Our original inspiration for the book came from a conversation about how the fashion furs community had yet to produce art book or photographical content like the stuff that Aycee has done with Gummy Guts, or like Brae did with his MLP series. We also noticed that, as far as we know, there have yet to be any photography-based collaborations in the fandom. So the thinking was: “why not both?”

Sol wanted to ground the project in reality, so we set a guideline for artists and photographers to try and list the clothing in their pieces.

Yazoo:
And to note there have been other fashion related fandom look books, which centered mostly around one kind of fashion in relation to fursonas in general.

Patch:
A few years back it caught my eye that photographers were getting inspiration from furry – so I wrote “Five pro photographers advancing the art of furry documentary.”

I was just on google looking up the Gummy Guts book. Doing a book that way is a bit of a new concept to me. I’m in the bigger-publisher way of thinking. Or in fandom that means Furplanet, Sofawolf or Rabbit Valley.

*High pitched squees* Lookit what came in the mail! @AyCeeArt Fantastic art book by talented artists~ much wow #GummyGuts #furryart pic.twitter.com/xljXi2qB3Y

— Manchas Sneppai @Katsucon (@irukatweetstuff) March 13, 2017

Oops! My hand slipped. More previews for Gummy Guts. A full color collaborative art collection debuting at #FC2017 pic.twitter.com/Fxm5jWC4b0

— Hyenas Go HaHa (@AyCeeArt) January 10, 2017

Steezy:
Hmm, I’ve never heard of those.

Yazoo:
They publish mostly furry literature and comics.

Cyan:
You’ve probably seen those books in dealers dens at cons.

We’re definitely a grassroots project. We’re not a company trying to make profit. Instead we’re a volunteer-based project that will use all profit from sales of the book to make the next one even better.

Steezy:
If it does well, we can print more books next time.

Cyan:
And in higher quality.

Patch:
It sounds like for showing off member stuff more than focusing on the other end of users, just because it’s cool and fun to make. For a while I have been saying there should be some focused effort on making like a Taschen book about furries, aimed for the niche interest side of real book stores. That’s a tall order though. A fun project like this seems more on the zine concept.

Cyan:
At this point, F/F Collective is definitely closer to the zine concept.

Steezy:
Specifically photo zines.

Cyan:
Right now we’re focused on collecting final submissions and piecing together a physical product to show people that this is a project that can put out a tangible product in a reasonable time. We made sure to hash out the important details early on in the brainstorming phase, so that when we have our pieces, we can quickly turn them into a physical product.

Lil preview of my part for the @TheFFCollective (Vol.1) book!
I'M!! So proud and excite for this book to finally come out; Everyone's submissions got me speechless and we can't wait to share it with yall!

Keep your eyes peeled, Follow The F/F Collective for future info! pic.twitter.com/9SvlTJQKqw

— Jhose (@JhoseMr) January 23, 2018

just these rough versions of the two shirts I plan on doing for now. I did these and 3 other cards as background pieces for a design that's going up in an art book @TheFFCollective is gonna be putting out but for now I'm not posting the full image so just these. pic.twitter.com/IPP9Z771yW

— SOY JIGOKU (@edgedestroys) January 22, 2018

Patch:
Is it going to be certain chapters inside guidelines (like one thing about fursuits, one about street wear, one about making with fabric) – or just based on interest of whoever submits?

Cyan:
Sol is collating a page list with tentative locations for each artist’s piece right now. We also have some really interesting art being done for the inside cover. He has been managing the project while I’m in school.

Sol:
I’m technically the talent manager, also the talent scouter. Everyone plays their part of course, me and Cyan have done a lot of the ground work and try to make sure everything’s running smooth.

Patch:
Will it include art, and photos, and writing?

Sol:
Not so much writing. We will include an Index of the outfits at the end, but for now we might keep that a surprise! If this first book sells well and we’re able to generate funds for a bigger book we could bring that into the grand scheme of things.

Patch:
It’s great you have a few models of previous books people made. I briefly looked up the Gummy guts book, it looked like good art and sold at least a solid 500 or more copies. I pay attention to how well things sell (even if thats not the point).

At FC I went to a panel with the president of the Furry Writers Guild and got info. Hundreds is a pretty solid number for any furry-published book. A few thousand would be like a top best seller. It’s not yet enough to make fandom publishing be like a “job” for those who do it (it could be cool if it was both job and fun, like it is for a few very successful fursuit makers). Art type books like this are different from fiction too, more of the limited-edition concept. I’ve dealt with some very niche photo book publishers outside fandom who do editions of 500 or 1000. Photo books are hot, they have object value.

Can you tell me more about the concept of a look book?

Sol:
LookBooks are usually just booklets that advertise an upcoming season line. “A collection of photographs compiled to show off a model, a photographer, a style, or stylist or a clothing line.”

A little slice preview of the piece I created for the upcoming F/F Volume 1! Follow @TheFFCollective to get updates when this awesome collaborative book will be available! #Furry #Fashion pic.twitter.com/T15RaVEfF6

— Weremagnus (@weremagnus) January 22, 2018

A collaborative piece by @skulldog and I for the Fashion Furs Lookbook!

Stay tuned! #FashionFurs@TheFFCollective pic.twitter.com/kahrEmTeNm

— A Dog On Quest (@S0LARDOG) January 24, 2018

Cyan:
I think we’ve been side-eyeing the store structure of bigger players in the fandom such as HyenaAgenda. You can go to their website and buy clothes, posters, stickers/etc.

This look book is more to show off the artists and photographers in this fandom who consider themselves part of the fashion furs community, or at least have an interest in fashion.

Sol:
If look books show off models, photographers, style, and clothing, why cant we toss in original art and some anthros?!

Cyan:
We might get into specific themes later on, in future volumes. If our book inspires members of the fandom to get into fashion, then mission accomplished. There’s already so much variety on display in the WIPs we’ve received.

Yazoo:
The most exciting part of it at least to me is that each and every participant has a different and unique idea of fashion to provide.

Patch:
I could see potential beyond just a book to pair artists, models, and makers who are known for a body of work. Fursuit makers have distinctive styles… get a photographer to set up concept shots and amplify each others talents.

Cyan:
Everyone seems to have their own unique take on -what- constitutes fashion. We’re hoping to show people that there really aren’t any boundaries.

Yazoo:
Photography and illustration alike, people’s inspiration and creativity in outfit design doesn’t ever fall into one category, everyone’s got something different to display.

Patch:
Can you tell me about those unique takes?

Cyan:
Well, I guess you could consider fashion, and an individual person’s take on fashion, to be akin to an artist’s take on their own personal art style. No two are exactly alike.

Addendum to my commissions post: I've been seeing a lot of wonderful Fashion Furs themed art going around and I TOO LOVE SARTORIALISM!
I'd love to draw your char in stylish duds- just specify in your message. Also feel free to attach some pieces/outfits for insp/reference pic.twitter.com/cEuCRalX6W

— nchovy hilips @ commissions (@snacknite) February 1, 2018

Patch:
I have a personal take I’d been meaning to write up… like accessorizing for partial fursuiting (there’s more flexibility with outfits than with fullsuiting.)

Yazoo:
Generally when people hear fashion, the first thing they think is “designer”. While designer can be a trend setter for looks and styles, the true value of a look is in the care and interest an individual has in the look they want to achieve.

Cyan:
So some people might be into flowing fabrics with varied textures, while others will be into a more street aesthetic. And even within individual aesthetics, styles vary.

Patch:
Is there crossover with dancer furs? People into dance I have known can be fashion focused.

Cyan:
There’s definitely a crossover.

Yazoo:
Dancerfurs and dancers in general have a pretty fun street style, so they definitely tend to take an interest in fashion. For dance it can be more about the FLASH of the clothes you wear, which some people take into everyday looks. I can definitely say a number of my looks are inspired by dance communities.

Patch:
Is it easy to explain those looks? Or is it best for just seeing in photos?

Cyan:
I think fashion is best explained through photography.

Yazoo:
Illustration as well.

Patch:
One thing I’d be curious about is methods of acquiring… like, I get good stuff from thrifting, hunting ebay/etsy for specific items, occasional DIY stuff like glittering my sneakers and putting on jacket patches, and lastly hunting bargain racks for stuff nobody bought because it’s odd but you can accessorize to make it stand out. Like that one pair of mint green jeans in a huge pile of samey blue.

Sol:
It’s more about what the eyes see and what you feel rather than words.

Cyan:
Note to self: do a 100% thrift photoset at one point or another.

Don't go broke trying to look rich all my clothes from the Thrift store Penny(wise) pic.twitter.com/TBrTZbuaOv

— ShotbyTy (@ACE100_) November 13, 2017

Sol:
We do have some DIY projects. We’re hoping that we can expose people to new places to look for clothing past Nike and Macy’s.

Yazoo:
There’s a very good knowledge base of places people go to find stuff, specific or otherwise in the fashion furs. Anything from thrifting to consignment to Target clearance racks.

Sol:
Some stuff will be dirt cheap, some stuff will possibly make you faint if you check the price tag haha, but all n all it’s diverse.

Cyan:
Also grailed.com. I think it’s incredibly important for outsiders looking in to understand that fashion doesn’t have to be a prohibitively expensive hobby to get into. It’s a slow burn with an incredibly rewarding end result.

Steezy:
I buy so much stuff on sale it’s not even funny.

Patch:
Trying new things is important. Years back I thought fashion = money, when I lived in small towns, and buying online seemed silly for stuff you couldn’t try on, and I didn’t make anything. So I wore the same jeans and plain things. Changing where I lived and looked helped. I still don’t spend tons but taking a chance on a few concept hand designed pieces has been really fun. And it doesn’t have to cost tons to just look for that one piece that makes an outfit and match it with other stuff.

Steezy:
I currently live in a tiny town out in Arizona and a lot of my shopping happens over the web.

Sol:
My brother who kinda started my interest in fashion taught me that just one strong piece can go a long way.

Is there anything you’d like to ask us?

Patch:
I should run, but nice to chat you guys so far.

Sol:
Same to you!!! Thanks for reaching out!

Yazoo:
Yeah this was great!

Cyan:
Thank you for your time!

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

From my closet.

Freaky Deaky Looks

Dancers, club kids, ravers, even Burning Man freaks – they all have standout looks that mingle with fandom sometimes. It’s a great place to celebrate creative expression in all of it’s forms.

Wherever furries meet, they wear their art. In costume or not, even their regular outfits are likely to be colorful with cartoony graphic appeal.  The interest crosses over with many aspects of a subculture full of young creative people.

Furs who love fashion recently started a collective to make projects together. I did a chat with the Furry Fashion Collective – that’s coming in Part 2. But first, this topic can’t overlook fursuiting, the fandom’s signature visual statement. It’s the silly side of things, but that’s not all there is to it.

Furries are making a nice presence at #BurningMan and getting love back. https://t.co/wdhY6byqk1 Looks like @Furcon attracted a Burner crew (pic from Dragonscales Photography.) Anyone know them? @asunyra @neonbunny @Amenophis_cat pic.twitter.com/hvDdcsZBPQ

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) February 1, 2018

Over The Top Fursuiting

* “a humble husky who loves the furry community”

Fursuits have become a small industry worth millions.  It’s having more and more success like the recent auction record of $13,500 for a Made Fur You suit. The passion for this custom-made wearable art is getting noticed outside fandom. Mainstream news about fursuiting-as-fashion includes a good article from Vice and a fashion article I contributed to on Racked.

For a long time, I’ve wanted to write a personal article about partial-fursuiting style.  Partialling isn’t just lazier fullsuiting.  There’s a need for clothes, but when you’re an animal-person, why settle for boring street clothes?  Seize the opportunity and plan a wild outfit. Deck out a partial with accessories for freaky, flashy glam. Go crazy with stuff you might never get away with as a regular human, like that white elephant piece in a thrift shop window that nobody dares to buy.

Over the top is my jam!  Wherever I go fursuiting, leaving behind a trail of shedded buttons, bandanas and glitter means I’m turning it up to 11. It’s more effort to put on the accessories than a full suit, but it’s extra fun for dancing and going on stage.

Sooner or later, I’ll spread out my closet full of Furry Trash gear and do photos to get that article done.

Glomps and glam - hi @TripECollie and @Mirawais pic.twitter.com/TlxOZzD0iP

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) January 30, 2018

Not just for kids!

Young people love fashion, and this is a fandom that skews young – but what about the greymuzzles? Are they just the unkempt nerds you see in long standing stereotypes? Heck no! Let’s hear it from the Greymuzzles group on Facebook, where this inspiring video got shared:

This 64-year-old fashion icon has a powerful message about aging pic.twitter.com/lpUVZw0NYB

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) January 26, 2018

Hunter commented on the video. I loved what he said and asked to share it to the public:

“This is excellent, and very relevant to our seasoned group here.

I had an experience some time ago that relates to this video. I witnessed a toony wolf fursuiter pop his top, and the gentleman underneath was around the age of this lady. I mentally sorted this guy as a banker or school principal instead of a bouncy fuzzy critter.

Now, here’s the deal: I associate fursuits (and all of furry, by extension) with youth, fun, vibrancy, energy, partying, creativity, openness, underground, experimental, fresh, liberal, “try everything”, cute, cuddly, and all that.

These are elements I don’t associate with older generations, which tend more towards mature, wise, stodgy, grumpy, controlling, parental, mainstream, corporate, early-bird special, conservative, authoritarian, “don’t do that”, etc.

In that moment, I experienced an acute sense of cognitive dissonance, due to these opposing mental associations. At the risk of “age shaming”, there was a small part of me that felt more mature audiences should “age out” of the fandom. I know, it’s messed up and hypocritical, especially in light of my own advancing maturity.

I had a choice to make: continue with this myopic viewpoint and remain conflicted, or change the way I see things.

To counteract this paradigm, I reminded myself that old-school furries that built this fandom were once the vibrant youth that my mind associates with it. Newly-minted greymuzzles bring their own magic to the table. Both sets have every right and reason to participate however they see fit. Both also deserve due respect, without me trying to impose my idea of what furry is “supposed to be”. So either I can get with the program, becoming enriched by their experience, or remain trapped in my prejudicial (and immature) ways of thinking.

It turns out that dissonance has actually underscored my own participation in the fandom for the past several years, due to my own advancing age and life experiences. Yeah, I get how “you’re only as young as you feel”, but how I feel isn’t consistent. When the furry magic is rolling hard, I feel like I’m in my 20’s (or younger) again. In that state, I “allow” myself to act according to my particular expression: bouncy-wouncy, fun-loving, and insufferably furry. On the other end of that spectrum, it’s the opposite, feeling like I’m in my 80’s (stupid health crap) and I withdraw because I’m not “feeling it”.

Ultimately, I feel as if I’m going to continue in this fandom, it’s going to be through fursuiting. Someday, I’m going to be just like that guy, taking off my head in the fursuit lounge, tripping some random young cub’s shit in the process. Then I’ll lock eyes with them and think, “I was once where you are, and so shall you be where I am. Try to keep up”.

(- Hunter)

Furry magic has no limits. There’s more in the interview with the Furry Fashion Collective coming in Part 2.

I wanted to share this touching moment. @Reo_Grayfox was telling me his story, and said those lines while staring straight into his fursuit's eyes. Hearing personal stories like this makes you appreciate the vastly diverse reasons why the furry fandom is essential to so many. pic.twitter.com/fD09Wmv6mf

— Joaquin Baldwin (@joabaldwin) January 22, 2018

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.