Dogpatch Press

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

Tucker Grizzwell’s Worst Week Ever, by Bill Schorr and Ralph Smith
Kansas City, MO, Andrews McMeel Publishing, January 2017, trade paperback $9.99 (242 pages), Kindle $8.49.

Laser Moose and Rabbit Boy, by Doug Savage
Kansas City, MO, Andrews McMeel Publishing, September 2016, hardcover $31.99, trade paperback $9.97 (144 pages), Kindle $9.47.

Phoebe and Her Unicorn, by Dana Simpson. Introduction by Peter S. Beagle.
Kansas City, MO, Andrews McMeel Publishing, September 2014, hardcover $13.99, trade paperback $9.99 (222 [+2] pages, Kindle $7.71.

These three books are samples of Andrews McMeel Publishing’s “AMP! comics for kids” series for children 8 to 12 years old (grades 3 to 7). The AMP! books are a combination of original book-length cartoon-art works and collections of newspaper or Internet daily comic strips. Most of them are not animal oriented, but here are two that are, plus Dana Simpson’s Phoebe and Her Unicorn, mostly for her previously-acclaimed hit in furry fandom, Ozy and Millie (although Phoebe does contain Marigold the Unicorn, and sometimes goblins). Furry fans may want to take a look at some of these. Many are in public libraries.

Tucker Grizzwell’s Worst Week Ever, by Bill Schorr and Ralph Smith, is a standalone original 242-page spinoff from Schorr’s The Grizzwells newspaper comic strip (1987 to present), featuring a funny-animal family of grizzly bears and their community. The newspaper strip is gag-a-day without any continuity. Schorr and his assistant Smith have tried to create a coherent novel, but what they have here is really a collection of lame one-liners with a thin connecting plot line. Astronomy class: “Do you know anything about asteroid belts?” “Only that they’re what asteroids wear when they can’t find their suspenders.” The characters compound the groaners by often breaking the fourth wall and looking knowingly at the reader. You can almost hear a drum-roll’s bada-boom.

Tucker is the young teenage cub in sixth-grade of middle school, with his slightly older sister Fauna. Other family members are Pop Gunther and Mom Flora. Friends include Pop’s buddy Pierpoint Porcupine, and the cubs’ schoolmates Mandy Fox, Hector Lobo (wolf), Lisa DeLovely (bear; Tucker’s crush), Norville Paddlebutt (beaver), Max Turtle, Walter Blimpnik (bear; school bully); and their school teachers and staff Miss Furball, Ms. Belch, Ms. Swinetrough, Ms. Fishbreath, Mr. Wheelbase. The overly-civilized Tucker’s worst week ever is the week anticipating “the ancient father-son rite of passage known as ‘Jaws and Claws’ weekend”, when his Pop and Pierpont Porcupine will teach him how to terrorize hikers, scare off picnickers (leaving their food behind), raid garbage pails, and eat roadkill.

Looking at this funny-animal comic strip forces the reader to consider the ancient conundrum: Why are female funny-animals always fully clothed, while the pre-puberty boys wear shirts and are nude below the waist? Funny-animal adult males can be either fully dressed, shirted only, or completely nude, depending on the needs of the comic; usually whether the setting is in a town or in the forest.

Anyway, Tucker Grizzwell’s Worst Week Ever is 242 pages of furry nudge-nudge-wink-wink and bada-boom. Buy according to your tastes.

Laser Moose and Rabbit Boy is an original 144-page graphic novel in three chapters by Doug Savage, the Canadian cartoonist who draws the webcomic Savage Chickens. Its sequel, Laser Moose and Rabbit Boy: Disco Fever, will be published in October.

The moose and squirrel rabbit are a couple of animals in the unspoiled Canadian North Woods, right by the factory of Toxicorp, “makers of fine toxic waste since 1892”. I expected that Laser Moose would get his light-saber vision from the flying saucers in the first story, but no, he already has it when the book starts. As you may imagine, it is hard to swing a laser beam around wildly in a thick forest without lopping down trees right and left. The wildlife like Frank the deer isn’t crazy about it, either. Rabbit Boy is a wide-eyed innocent who marvels at the stars and the beauties of nature. Laser Moose is a paranoid who suspects that every tree has a monster hiding behind it.

Rabbit Boy: “Isn’t it amazing? I love the night sky!”

Laser Moose: “Well, I don’t. The night sky is fraught with danger… Night is when evil can hide, under cover of darkness, waiting to strike! At night, evil can creep out from the seedy underbelly of the forest, where it –“

Rabbit Boy: “What’s a ‘seedy underbelly’?”

Laser Moose: “Um…a seedy underbelly is…well, it’s not good.”

Since Laser Moose has laser-beam vision, watch out! He definitely believes in shooting to kill first; asking questions afterward.

The stories are mild parodies of super-hero comic books. Some of the villains, who are real and not just in Laser Moose’s imagination, are Cyborgupine, Aquabear, and Mechasquirrel.

Phoebe and Her Unicorn is the first of five (so far) books; the others are Unicorn on a Roll (May 2015), Unicorn vs. Goblins (February 2016), Razzle Dazzle Unicorn (September 2016), and Unicorn Crossing (March 2017). The next will be The Magic Storm in October 2017. This first book collects her daily strips (six weekly days and a Sunday page) from April 22, 2012 to November 18, 2012 – approximately seven months per volume. The strips are rearranged from newspaper-strip format to book format, typically four panels per page (the Sunday pages are reduced), and colored when the newspaper strips were black-&-white.

Phoebe Howell is a 9-year-old fourth grader at Tipton Elementary who meets a unicorn. The unicorn grants her one wish. She wishes for the unicorn to become her best friend. The unicorn, whose name is Marigold Heavenly Nostrils, moves in with her. Her parents and classmates can see and hear Marigold, but thanks to her magic Shield of Boringness, nobody considers her worth calling to anyone’s attention.

Much of the Phoebe and Her Unicorn comic strip consists of Phoebe riding Marigold as the two converse. Marigold drops words of unicorn wisdom, but since she is also incredibly vain and self-centered (“Bask in my wonderfulness.” “The stars themselves are jealous of my loveliness.”), it’s hard to tell how seriously to take her. Continuing supporting characters include Phoebe’s parents, and her two classmates Dakota, her fabulously rich and beautiful “frenemy” who claims to be vastly superior and constantly calls her insulting names like “Princess Stupidbutt”, and the brainy but nerdy Max. The book concludes with seven pages of children’s activities: how to draw Marigold and Phoebe, “Make a Marigold Heavenly Nostrils Stick Puppet”, and similar others.

Phoebe and Her Unicorn, the book, does not present many anthropomorphic animals besides Marigold, but she is on practically every page doing unicorn things, often involving magic such as making the annoying Dakota’s flowing wavy hair disappear, leaving her as bald as Lex Luthor. (In Unicorn vs. Goblins, Dakota is given sentient hair.) One other magical animal does very briefly appear; Todd the Candy Dragon, who spews trick-or-treat candy on Halloween. Rar. Future volumes may feature other anthropomorphic fantasy animals, such as the small green goblins who say only “BLART!” The Phoebe and Her Unicorn books work as well as collections of gag-a-day comic strip collections usually do.

So: the Andrews McMeel Publishing’s “AMP! comics for kids” series that feature anthro animals are a mixed bag; mostly silly and juvenile, but worth checking out. You may find something to your taste.

–Fred Patten

• Buy Tucker Grizzwells Worst Week Ever on Amazon
• Buy Laser Moose on Amazon
• Buy Laser Moose Book 2 on Amazon
• Buy Phoebe and Her Unicorn on Amazon
• Buy Unicorn on a Roll on Amazon
• Buy Unicorn vs. Goblins on Amazon
• Buy Razzle Dazzle Unicorn on Amazon
• Buy Unicorn Crossing on Amazon

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Thanks to Alecta Andromeda for contributing a first guest post.

This is a mature content book.  Please ensure that you are of legal age to purchase this material in your state or region.

I keep hoping that a new renaissance in furry erotica is upon us, bringing hot, sexy anthro copulation in increasing quality, but the search for real stars in the genre is tough one as the field still needs to find it’s legs.

On that note, I am excited to highlight an exciting name to watch. Lilith K. Duat and Maria Delynn collaborated on the E-book Balance in Chaos. It’s an oddball title with an overload of exposition in places, but overall the furry and erotic elements are well balanced and hot.

The concept itself is also quite the page turner. Anup is a corollary to Egypt’s Anubis, ruling the realm of the dead as an obsessive (and dominant!) master. Some may say that the furry aspect of this novel is light, and it is, but I have a huge thing for Jackals and always wanted to get laid by Anubis. Egypt and Greek gods are colliding in a conflict of souls and waging war over followers. Turns out as one nation invades another, the Gods of the defeated faith suffer a loss of power. The give and take of this conflict laid a great backdrop for the characters, and it was nice to go into the book with a sense of familiarity.

The plot also gives us a perfect backdrop for the sex! Anup is disciplined and moral. Discordia is a God of Chaos. While first embroiled in combat and disdain, Anup takes a sensual control of Discordia and dominates her with the sheer might of his Jackal manhood. The hesitation, the temptation, the wrongness and star crossed lover plot is a little cliche, but works every way it should.

Me personally, I like my erotica with a hint of violence and sadism (check out my own work to see me go to all sorts of nasty extremes) and Chaos and Balance gives a good dose of that. Discordia’s relationship with her brother Ares is tumultuous, leading to a few torture scenes that honestly got my rocks right off. It’s not so bad as to be out of place or a turn off for more casual readers. The violence works for the plot increasing the desire and love between the protagonists.

Overall, it’s a great read. It’s not the nonstop sex obsessed rave most people consider with a “furry” erotica, but it is nonetheless a sexy book and sure to leave you satisfied and ready for a shower!

Hotness rating 4 out of 5 knots.

– Alecta Andromeda

• Read Lillith’s book here!
• For Alecta’s blog with NSFW images and story samples, check out her Tumblr page.

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

reWritten, by Jako Malan
Plainfield, CT, Goal Publications, April 2017, trade paperback $15.00 (200 [+2] pages).

The setting of reWritten is a world from which humans have disappeared and been replaced with anthropomorphized Mammalœ.

It’s best not to dwell on the confusing background. The Mammalœ are aware of man’s past existence:

“We are, indeed, not the first to call this world our home. Bright-eyed and naive, our earliest ancestors wandered forth as the sun set on the age of man and rose for Mammalœ. The ruins of their magnificent civilization would be both the foundation and inspiration for our own.” (p. 1)

What happened to man? It doesn’t sound like man became extinct through war, unless it was a war that didn’t include blast damage – the Mammalœ consider man’s ruins to be “magnificent”. Have the Mammalœ (the narrator is an anthro jackal; others are aardvarks, meerkats, springboks, rats, rabbits, mongooses, servals, cheetahs, etc.) evolved to replace man? That would take millions of years. Surely there wouldn’t be anything of man’s left to seem “magnificent”. The Mammalœ civilization seems like a rundown funny-animal imitation of man’s; a smoky city that includes coal power, rickety electric trams, hand-cranked automobiles for the rich; most Mammalœ riding bicycles… The Mammalœ such as the rat and zebra are all the same size, presumably human. It’s easier to just accept that man was here but is gone now, and anthro mammals (Malan is South African; so is the setting – the Mammalœ currency is even rands, not dollars) have replaced him in early-20th-century-style cities.

Professor M. (for Makwassie) van Elsburg (a jackal), head of the Department of Anthropology and History at Mammalaœ University in Bridgend (apparently a major Mammalœ city), is approached at a reception by rich Mr. Oberholzer (a hyrax), the patriarch of the Bridgend Energy Cartel. Prof. van Elsburg recognizes him as one of the most influential and notorious mobsters in Bridgend. (He flaunts it; what’s the point of being influential and notorious if everyone doesn’t know it?) Oberholzer is also interested in the history and disappearance of man, and he has a private museum in his mansion. Five months earlier he and an associate had organized an expedition to the ruins of a human city that they hoped would provide more information. The expedition disappeared; simultaneously Oberholzer’s private collection was burglarized, and his servants began being followed. Oberholzer wants Prof. van Elsburg to lead a second expedition to the ruins, to find the hoped-for information and any clues to the vanished first expedition. Elsburg objects that he’s late-middle-aged and sedentary, without any experience in exploring, but Oberholzer’s request is similar to Don Vito Corleone’s offer that can’t be refused.

“‘Take the train to the Ashton precinct.’ Mr. Oberholzer’s last instructions interrupted my train of thought. ‘That is as far as the railways will take you. In town, I will arrange for my associate to meet you. He will brief you from there onwards. I have already contacted him with the particulars of the assignment. Be vigilant, Professor. Don’t discuss your task with anyone. And don’t disappoint me.’” (pgs. 31-32)

The reader will have already seen the book’s blurbs that describe it as “an existential horror story”:

“In a world only superficially similar to our own, it asks questions that have no easy answers, and answers questions that may have been better left unasked.”

Or in other words: There are things that Mammalœ were never meant to know!

reWritten is curiously like an Indiana Jones-type adventure with attempted assassination, creepy ruins, ominous visions, betrayal, cannibalism. mental programming, body possession, flying death machines, ferocious wild carnivores, etc., as narrated by an old-fashioned slightly stuffy college professor. Little touches in his narrative reinforce this:

“Opening the tent carefully, I peeked outside. I saw nothing out of the ordinary, but could smell the burnt residue from low-grade propellant above that of trauma,” (p. 53)

He’s talking about smelling gunpowder and blood. That’s a wordy way of describing the odor of burnt gunpowder and blood.

“Having dressed myself and finished my morning prayers, I stepped out of the tent again to embrace the fourth day away from home for a second time. My nose tingled with the characteristic aroma of burning coal, above that of chicory brewing in a pot.” (p. 55)

How many explorers start their days with morning prayers? Chicory is usually considered a poor substitute for coffee when coffee is unavailable.

Prof. van Elsburg heads into the Wastelands leading a squad of five mercenaries: Dunswart, a one-eyed honey badger; Marlboro, a stringy meerkat; Xanadu, a burly Cape Buffalo; Magalies, a crazy painted dog; and Isando, an adolescent kudu. Guess what will happen to them?

“The bartender [a bulldog] nodded again; clearly, they [he and Dunswart] had some form of mutual understanding. He appeared to be cut out for his job. An ancient scar stretched across his forehead and muzzle, his arms were muscular, and his dirty apron hid the outlines of a large revolver at his hip.

‘What can I get ye?’ he asked.

‘Something strong, please,’ I replied.” (p. 39)

Here is a description of starting the expedition’s truck on a freezing day:

“Pumping the accelerator, Marlboro opened a valve under the dashboard. The engine bulged with compressed air stored from the last time it ran. One or two bitter cycles later, it spat a tongue of flame before dying. Saturated black smoke poured from the exhaust pipe just beside and above the driver’s door. I was vindicated. It was not just I who did not like the cold!” (p. 48)

The writing is wordy and florid by modern standards. I do not know if this is Malan’s natural style, or he is trying to emulate a 1910s-era slightly pedantic academic. Some of the word choices seem peculiar. “The [railway] conductor, a brown hare, leered impatiently at his pocket watch.” Leered? “An oncoming train stormed past, its obnoxious horn clefting the night.” Not “cleaving”? “Smelt” instead of “smelled”. “‘Amazing,’ lamented Isandro.” “Three rifles and a revolver bayed for her blood, […]”

Here is one of the human ruins, of a railway station:

“The glass door had shattered. We stepped right through the naked steel frame into a dark lobby with a layer of sand and debris covering the floor. The ceilings were tall and adorned with dead light fixtures.” (p. 56)

It doesn’t seem like man has been gone for more than a few centuries at most; a very short time for Mammalœ to repopulate the world.

This review is saying nothing further about the plot, or about what the expedition finds. That’s for the reader to discover. There are some real surprises and, lest I appear to not have read the ending, much of what I say earlier is contradicted. What I have described is the old-fashioned writing style and the attempt to develop a horror-tale mood:

“‘Many strange and terrible things lay in wait on these plains,’ Anzac [a hyena] said. ‘Mother told me stories that would make your skin crawl. Who knows what terrible event ended her life.’” (p. 66)

“It was a buffet of misery, and there was only one guest at this feast.” (p. 96)

reWritten (cover by Tim Jardim) is a different furry novel; supposedly “an existential horror story”, but more mysterious and portentous (and science-fictional) than frightening and horrific (and supernatural), and with an elderly, non-heroic hero who dithers more than he reacts. It’s certainly a change from the in-your-face horror novels that scream and gibber at you. I liked it; I hope you will, too.

–Fred Patten

• Buy at Rabbit Valley
• Buy at Jaffa Books
• Buy at Goal Publications

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This con’s theme is “Summer Camp.” Yay for summer camp! How about sweaty, un-air-conditioned bunkhouses? Poison ivy? MOSQUITOS?  Get ready to celebrate NONE of those things at the new Tiny Paws Con. They just have the parts that don’t suck: fun and games, getting together with old friends, and making new ones. If you’re itching for that in September, Tiny Paws has the cure.

They’re so friendly, I’m sure they would even give a warm welcome to Spottacus in his Skeetersuit. (Why does Spotti have one of those? Because nobody else does!)

Tiny Paws is bringing fresh blood to the Northeast US thanks to organizers like the former founder and co-conchair of FurFright, K’gra Leopard.  Give them a buzz on social media, or read on if you want to fly in for fun.

Here’s what they sent:

Summer might be winding down, but one summer camp still is offering tons of fun: Tiny Paws Con! A new convention in the light-hearted spirit of creativity and sharing with friends, this event hopes to capture the magic of everyone’s first convention.

Tiny Paws Con offers over forty dealers in The Expo (the dealer room), an amazing Gaming Lodge with events run by ConnectiCon’s Tabletop Shop and Steve Jackson Games’ MiB, fursuit games, a Fursuit Foto Shoot (a more relaxed and intimate alternative to a fursuit parade), a dance, a Charity Raffle supporting the Connecticut Humane Society, an Arts and Crafts Lounge attendees can visit and create just like they did in art class so many years ago, and more!

To their knowledge, Tiny Paws Con is also excited to be the first trying something new: a Furries of Triumph achievement book, where attendees joining in on the fun over the whole weekend can earn rewards towards the 2018 event.

Pre-registration closes on July 31st, so to save some money and help support the Connecticut Humane Society, please register today!

With over fifteen years of combined experience running FurFright and other charity fundraising, the organizers of Tiny Paws Con hope you will give them a chance with their new convention. Conventions and charities succeed only with the help and generosity of the fandom we all know and love.

Hope to see you all soon!

Visit Tiny Paws Con on their website (http://tinypawscon.org). For the most up-to-date information follow them on Twitter (@TinyPaws_Con) or Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/TinyPawsCon/).

July 21 is the deadline for conbook submissions (art/written/advertising).

July 31 is the deadline for pre-registration. The pricing is:

• Tinker: $40 (3-day admission, badge, conbook)
• Crafter: $60 (Tinker + t-shirt and raffle ticket)
• Engineer: $100 (Crafter + art prints)
• Architect: $200 (Engineer + special gift and thanks in the conbook)

Pre-registered attendees are also eligible for a drawing to be our Attendee Guest of Honor. The Attendee GOH’s membership is automatically upgraded to Architect and they also receive free Tinker admission to next year’s event. The winner will be notified prior to the convention.

To register, visit this webpage: http://tinypawscon.org/index.php/registration/attendee-registration/pre-registration

Fill in the form and on the second page submit your payment via Paypal.

Dealer registration is currently in Wait List mode.

(Note: Dealers who apply for or currently are registered as a business in the State of Connecticut receive a $20 discount on the price of their table.)

Half-tables start at $65 (higher prices for sponsor levels).

Full tables start at $105 (higher prices for sponsor levels).

Dealer table prices include 3-day admission to the convention, a conbook, and badge. Full table dealers may also register one Assistant starting at $10 (no further discount due to having a CT sales permit).

For more information regarding dealer registration, visit: http://tinypawscon.org/index.php/registration/dealer-registration

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2017 is officially halfway over, and boy has it been one hell of a year for the fandom. We’ve covered the official demise of Rainfurrest, 2’s fall from grace and subsequent cancellation at Anthrocon, and more than one fake bomb threat being called into a convention… and we still have six months left to go! Fret not, because while we’ve collected four more of the top stories in the fandom to present to you today most of them aren’t that soul crushing. Most.

BIGGEST LITTLE SH*T SHOW

Furries in Reno rejoiced last month as Biggest Little Fur Con (“BLFC”) took place to the tune of approximately 5,100 attendees. This was a jump of more than 1,500 people compared to 2016’s turnout making 2017’s convention the largest on record. This rapid growth could not have come at a worse time however, because BLFC took place hot on the heels of — and around the same geographic location as — the smoldering remains of Rocky Mountain Fur Con which crashed and burned in a mess of fascist/anti-fascist drama, threats of violence, and some bizarre sovereign citizen lawsuit thing that ended up propelling law blogger The Boozy Barrister into fandom stardom. To this day none of this makes any sense to the What’s Yiffin’ news team, but the important takeaway is that there was plenty of lingering animosity that bled over into BLFC.

BLFC had your standard “big convention” issues with things like spills and accidents and “The Floor 21 Incident“, but there were bigger problems publicly in the form of certain furs electing to use the convention as a platform for political demonstrations. Pictures began circulating of furs taking the convention’s theme of “kaiju” and twisting it onto its head by emblazoning prop buildings with “FASCISM” before stomping on them or kicking them over. Issues of a Communist zine titled “The Cultural Barxist” began cropping up in communal places at the convention with articles meant to incite politically-charged violence against others.

These are the growing pains of a convention stretching very large very quickly, and BLFC would be wise to nip this in the bud and completely put a stop to dissemination of political materials at their con altogether; people do not attend furry conventions to be lectured to politically no matter which side or argument is being presented. No arm bands, no flags, no leaflets; none of that — and punch some holes in the badges of people who willingly disobey the rules. For the sake and future of BLFC, the con organizers have some important choices and decisions to make regarding how they should carry onward for 2018’s convention, the dates of which are already announced. We wish them the best of luck in coming to an agreeable situation that puts the best interests of their general attendees front and center.

 

GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT!

You ever accidentally wander into that section of YouTube devoted to weird fetish videos? Things like videos of women in stilettos stepping on watermelons, or people changing pudding-filled diapers on baby dolls? It’s pretty obvious what purpose videos such as these serve but banning them from the service has always been a sort of gray area because technically it’s “not” porn. Reptile Channel (not to be confused with HerpersTV’s “The Reptile Channel”) is one of the many YouTube accounts that occupies this No Man’s Land of strange and cringey fetish material.

In a story originally cracked by Dogpatch Press it was determined that Reptile Channel may potentially be owned and operated by JonahVore, a voreaphile whose antagonistic and potentially illegal content has resulted in multiple bans and suspensions all over the Internet. You see, reptiles often swallow their food whole. Hopefully that’s something you’ve already been aware of, however Reptile Channel takes pleasure in showcasing these animals feeding with just a little too much gusto and borderlines on straight up animal cruelty. Hiding behind the veneer of “this is for herpetological/educational purposes” the channel has thus far gotten away with showcasing some rather brutal content.

The link to JonahVore came about by a tip from FurAffinity user Tanookicatoon who compared historical post information with crossposts on websites such as YouTube, Patreon, and a vore forum called “Big Gulp”. Additionally, Big Gulp had been running advertisements for the forum using lingo like “some [videos] you might remember” which raised a red flag to Tanookicatoon. The aforementioned forum ads disappeared once this was pointed out, and Big Gulp’s primary administrator Strega has declined to comment on the person(s) behind the channel.

Currently, Reptile Channel is still online and uploading content.

 

ANTHROCON’S NEW CHAIR

Pittsburgh’s Anthrocon is “THE” furry convention; it’s among the longest running conventions in the United States and for quite some time has been the barometer against which all other conventions are measured against. Anthrocon has the biggest turnouts, the most media exposure, and the biggest guests. You name it, they’ve got it — and now if “mobility scooters” is something you’re going to try and name Anthrocon’s got those as well. Prior to the convention the organizers announced via Twitter that they were partnering up with Scootaround to provide powerchairs to the physically impaired at Anthrocon this year.

Some responses to the Tweet took lighthearted jabs at con chair Uncle Kage, who’s getting up there in years, but here at What’s Yiffin’ we elected to take the low-hanging fruit and make some good ol’ fashioned fat fur jokes. That’s gotta be the case, because if there’s an attendee with a chronic condition or injury chances are they already own a chair and have brought it with them; the only people likely to use Anthrocon’s chairs would be the same people who use the ones at Walmart. But hey, jokes aside increasing the accessibility of their convention is certainly a step in the right direction if this is what Anthrocon needs to maintain its edge in the fandom.

Besides, what else are you going to do with a powerchair at a fur con? Bad Dragon jousting?

 

CRACKED CASHES IN

Former comedy-website-turned-“hey-we-can-complain-about-politics-too” rag Cracked Magazine recently published another article about the furry fandom titled “5 Things I Learned Attending a Furry Convention“. Unlike the last time we took some cheap pot shots at Cracked, this time around the article was written by Mark “Firebird” Hill. No, just because his nickname is Firebird doesn’t make him one of us; chances are this normie is just a fan of the Pontiac car and named himself after that.

A quick look through Mark’s work reveals that he’s previously written Pulitzer Prize winning articles such as “7 Secret (And Stupid) Rules For Working For President Trump” and “5 Movie Plots That No Longer Make Sense Post-Trump”. Like we said this is what Cracked has become in this day and age so we can’t say we’re not at least a little bit apprehensive about what this dude has to say about the fandom. (Full disclosure, we just cherry-picked some antagonistic article titles. Mark has also written about normal things that doesn’t involve the current President like movies and video games.)

Mark chose Fur-Eh! in Edmonton as his convention du jour and that’s a good thing too because had he come to the United States and gone to something like Biggest Little Fur Con he probably would’ve written a totally different article. Despite this, throughout his piece Mark kept hitting on this point that fur cons are allegedly a good place to score drugs which is a pretty crummy punchline to harp on when #4 on his list is literally “The Media Hasn’t Been Kind to Furries”. You don’t get to have your cake and eat it too, and we’re assuming this isn’t a joke in and of itself because A) that kind of humor is a bit too out of Cracked’s reach these days and B) he keeps up the gag for the entire article.

Spoiler alert: After all this, Mark’s #1 is “wow you guys totally won’t believe this but furries are normal people too!” Gee, that ending wasn’t hamfisted at all!

 

That’s a wrap on last month’s top fandom stories. That’s all we’ve got, hope you enjoyed it! Because we’ve been asked about it, the Ursa Major Award winners were not included in this month’s edition because they were announced on July 1st. Since this happened right at the start of the month we’ll be covering them in August’s edition of the show. Make sure you’ve subscribed to Gatorbox on YouTube and Twitch so you’ll catch it!

– André “Dracokon” Kon & Rob “Roastmaster” Maestro

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

Hot Dish. Volume 2, edited by Dark End. Illustrated.
St. Paul, MN, Sofawolf Press, December 2016, trade paperback $17.95 (viii + 307 pages)

Hot Dish #2 is an anthology intended for an adult audience only and contains some explicit sexual scenes of various sexual orientations. It is not for sale to persons under the age of 18. (publisher’s rating)

Hot Dish #1 (edited by Alopex) was published in March 2013. Sofawolf described it as “Hot Dish is a collection of stories about the romantic and erotic relationships between characters of disparate species and sexual orientations. It is a hearty portion of quality fiction which was too long to fit into our yearly adult anthology, Heat.” It won the 2013 Cóyotl Award for Best Anthology.

Hot Dish #2 does not have only stories that were too long for Heat. Sofawolf solicited stories especially for it during 2014. But otherwise this is a good description of Hot Dish #2: eight long novelettes of romantic and erotic s-f & fantasy relationships with humanoid animals, each illustrated by one of three artists. Romance and eroticism are presented in an extremely wide range of backgrounds and emotions.

These eight novelettes are so lengthy that each feels almost like a short novel. This is a long review.

“Loops and Knots” by Tempe O’Kun (illustrated by Anyare) is a time-travel comedy. Tess, a jackal, and Erik, her golden retriever mad scientist/hippie lover, can’t get enough of each other. So Eric turns their large refrigerator into a time machine and brings his one-week-future self to join them for three-way fun-&-games. When Tess is too tired and needs a break, she gets an erotic thrill watching present-Ertk and future-Erik making love to himself.

“‘It’s more like retro-chronal masturbation, really.’ Erik draped a blanket over her lap.” (p. 10)

“Still in a post-orgasmic daze, Tess watched her boyfriend’s temporal tryst. His silken shag blended together, every shade of gold shining in the autumn sun. His muzzle locked with itself. Feeling an odd pang of jealousy, she crossed her arms. ‘You’re completely shameless, aren’t you?’

[…]

She pressed a hand to her forehead, trying not to smile. ‘Oh, all right. Go fuck yourself.’” (p. 17)

It’s very lewd, very sticky, and very funny.

“Spaces to Breathe” by Slip-Wolf (illustrated by Kalahari; also the book’s cover by Merystic) is an intriguing story, but ultimately unconvincing. Earlan Rokeh is a young otter technician on an exploratory spaceship with a mixed species crew, investigating a large “artefact” drifting in space for over two hundred years. They bring with them Kaenshi, a mystery Seracete alien who may know what the artefact contains. She wears a lifelike female wolf body suit to conceal her true form. The body suit has been created by Dr. Harmun Cirjus, a real wolf. The body suit is realistic enough (including a vagina) that Earlan and Cirjus both fall in lust/love with her. Supposedly Kaenshi’s true form – the reason a body suit is necessary — is so shocking that she fears nobody would want to have anything to do with her, but Earlan proves faithful.

Earlan is an earnest, naïve adolescent tech-geek who is required by the story to fall in lust with any attractive female mammal. Several flashbacks to his pre-mission life make the teenage tech-geek persona more convincing, but the lover persona less convincing. Dr. Cirjus must know what her true form looks like; why does he fall in lust/love with the body suit he’s made for her? I didn’t buy the original Pygmalion legend and I don’t buy this reworking of it. The story is not helped by such poor proofreading as a lack of commas (“Kaenji what of the systems on the artefact?” Dr. Cirjus intoned), incorrect pronouns, and run-on sentences (“Her and that coyote first officer of hers didn’t know how to follow orders properly and it surprised Cirjus that this was one of the Tribes Commission’s most highly rated crew.”)

“The Theorist” by Huskyteer (illustrated by Anyare) is a pastiche of the Victorian uproar over the theory of natural selection, with cats rather than man as the “divine” creation. Leo Mountjoy is a feline scientist who has theorized the evolution of all species. Even though he does not deny the existence of God, he is aware that almost everyone else is “on the side of the angels”. In private life, Leo’s wife Felicity almost died from the difficult birth of their child, and the doctors assure Leo that another pregnancy will be fatal to her. Leo has never felt homosexual, but when Noel Tate, a young fan of his theory, indicates a physical interest as well in Leo, he accepts it as a means of relieving his bodily needs while remaining romantically faithful to Felicity. Of course, it doesn’t stop there…

It would be possible to rewrite “The Theorist” with humans instead of cats, but Huskyteer does an excellent job of adding enough feline attributes to make this a furry story. Printing in this civilization consists of raised symbols read by paws instead of inked symbols read with eyes:

“It was raining when he left, fat drops pattering on his hat and overcoat. He caught the last train and buried himself behind the pages of his newspaper; flicking his wet tail and ears. He studied the print with fierce absorption, running the sensitive pad of his finger across the pattern of lines and dots. Halfway down, the text was interrupted by a cartoon. Under his pads, he suddenly recognized his own features, crudely drawn and transplanted upon the body of a black and white cat.

He did not bother reading the caption.

Leo realized that his claws were out and had scored the paper, rendering the second and third pages illegible. He snorted, and a drip fell from his whiskers. Outside the train, the dairy farms around London would be giving way to the trout and salmon lakes of the south. He let his claws work in and out of the fabric of his carpet bag instead.” (p. 81)

But most of all, she makes Leo, Felicity, Noel, and one other such sympathetic and appealing characters that you will not care whether they are cats or humans. It’s touching and very satisfying.

“The Favor of the Gods” is by Kyell Gold (illustrated by Kalahari). Gold is one of the top writers in furry fandom, but I can’t decide which I like better here; the story or its background?

The story is set in the ancient mythological Greek town of Taxos, a favorite of the Greek gods and where most of their half-animal children live. “When everyone is somebody, then no one’s anybody”, as W. S. Gilbert wrote, so being a grandson of Hermes doesn’t get Teknas, an apprentice carpenter, any special privileges:

“Before anyone else (such as Giles) could start, Teknas told the selector the story of how Hermes had traveled to a distant land and taken on a shape he’d seen there, something between a fox and wolf. ‘And he fathered our ancestors on a maiden named Kaothus, and so we took our name from her,’” (pgs. 110-111)

Teknas is a coyote, and that’s what coyotes are doing in ancient Greece. But he’s not the only coyote; Hermes has been lusty. Taxos is also the home of anthro bulls, foxes, sheep, rabbits – you name it, besides humans. I’m tempted to just quote background and not get to the plot at all:

“Most of Taxos worked in the orchards and fields, rising before Teknas and returning during the mid-afternoon heat while he still labored in Master Risto’s workshop. […] and then he found the small cluster of coyotes standing near the fox families, a veritable storm of wagging tails.” (p. 108)

Teknas is in love (or adolescent lust) with Thea, who wants a feather from the famous Pegasus, who is visiting Taxos. Teknos hopes that the flying horse has shed one, but he finds that the flying horse is actually Galatea, Pegasus’ granddaughter – and she develops a crush on him. Teknas pretends to reciprocate to get the feather, and there’s some graphic … is it bestiality between a flying mare and an anthro coyote? Teknas isn’t too worried because a lusty male taking advantage of an innocent female is a proud tradition of ancient Greece; but this is a granddaughter of Pegasus, which makes her a (favorite) great-granddaughter of Poseidon:

“I’m sorry, he cries, but the god’s eyes do not relent, boring deep into his own. ‘I SHOULDST KEEP THOU HERE, AS A TOY FOR AMPHITRITE’S CHILDREN.’ The Nereids holding him draw back their lips and grin in glee. ‘BUT FOR ONE OF HERMES’, SOMETHING MORE … EDUCATIONAL IS IN ORDER.’” (p. 131)

What does Poseidon do to Teknas? And what does Hermes do about it? Read “The Favor of the Gods” and find out. Teknas and Galatea are two very physically different but sympathetically presented adolescents.

“The Hound and the Tree” by Kandrel (illustrated by Black Teagan) is set twenty years after the hounds have destroyed civilization. It’s narrated by Alex, an anthro wolf, a lone survivor who may have gone a little crazy from loneliness. He names a tree “Roger” for companionship:

“I had been sweeping up Roger’s discarded leaves – he really was a pig. All that slurry got slippery when it rained. I’d had more than a few undignified face-plants, and under those leaves was steel. Home was a platform, built before the hounds. I’d found it not long after I’d escaped from that crowded train car. Near the scaffolding I’d climbed up into the sky, signs advertised the new ‘Alfland Arcology.’ It was one of the most ambitious projects ever started. In it, a million and a half people would be able to live, work, and enjoy the very greatest of life above the old city. All that had ever been finished was the stilts and platforms upon which the arcology was planned to be built. This was home now – whole square miles of suspended steel, with the occasional crown of a tree pushing its way through, like Roger. It was safety. It was isolation. It was also hell on the knees when I slipped. Steel did not forgive. So up went the leaves, into a pile, then down into the below. I’d cleaned the front of my little hut and out towards the trail. Not that anyone would be coming down it. They never did, but it was good to be prepared in case they did.” (p. 144)

Someone finally does come down the trail:

“She was running – sprinting really — through through the twilight-dark forest. In my view, she was just a reddish blob, but I could clearly make out the posture. Two arms, two legs, one tail, so definitely not one of the pack. I tracked her from camera three, then to camera eight, then to camera one as she stopped against Roger’s roots to catch her breath. This was the closest any survivor had come to Roger and I with the pack on their tail. This time, I could see it, watch what happened. Before, they’d always been too far away, and only after weeks of searching after a hunt would I find the sad little bundle of clothes and scavenged gear. This time, I’d finally learn what hounds could do,” (p. 146)

Alex saves Lee, the wolf woman, and since they’ve both been alone for years, they have lots of sex. To add any more plot would give too much away.

I’ve quoted this at length to show you what Kandrel’s writing is like. It’s very rich and descriptive – but it could be condensed 50% or more. It is well-written, but it never escapes Alex’s overwhelming loneliness. So much solo-wolf background becomes annoying; the reader gets impatient for some action. It’s also very much a funny-animal story that could easily feature humans. It feels like the main characters are given fur and tails just to fit this story into a furry anthology.

“The Years of Living Dangerously Happy” by Patrick “Bahumat” Rochefort (illustrated by Kalahari) is a pas de trois between Colin, otter; Katey, gemsbok; and Stellan, mule. Ten years ago, they all lived at Silverbell Lake Lodge, a rustic forest fishing chalet that was home and business for them. Six years ago, Katey and Stellan left for the city to pursue their research, leaving Colin, who cared for the lodge and its environment more than the others, to continue to run it in their absence. Now they have come back to sell it; both his business and his home. Their reunion goes from politely strained to wildly erotic.

Unlike “The Hound and the Tree”, this is an excellent furry story. Colin is not just an otter; he could not be anything but an otter:

“He ran down the dock and dove from it in a clean, tense arc. Colin knifed through the surface with ease and with hardly a splash.

Hitting the water was like being born again.

The cool sunlit water closed around him, and Colin came alive in a way few people ever knew anymore. The water closed around his mind just as much as his body, reducing his thoughts and his perceptions to natural essentials. […]   There, under the surface of the water, he was just an otter. And otters were For Fishing.” (p. 174)

Katey and Stellan need the money from the sale of the lodge to complete their research to make Stellan, and other sterile mules, fertile:

“‘You were going to tell me about having kids,’ Colin prompted, after a while.

Katey closed her eyes. ‘It’s why we need the money, Colin. Stellan’s sperm is mostly no good, but about one in ten thousand is viable. Isolating those from the rest is possible, but it’s expensive and difficult. We’ve come up with a way, repurposing the technology they use for livestock breeding. Basically we make microscopic chips that measure and weigh the sperm, and all the bad ones get chucked. Only the ones that are viable get kept. We can do it, Stellan and I. Already filed the patents. But actually building the chips is going to cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then there’s IVF fees to get a viable fetus. Then we look at government approval.’” (p. 187)

The anthro animals are convincing. Their emotions are convincing. The sex is basically humanoid and joyous.

“Cold Sleep” by Faora Meridian (illustrated by Black Teagan) is the emotional opposite. The main characters are Engineers Brishen, an older vular (fox) with graying russet fur, and Tariku, his young new partner. They are part of the engineering team on the Dreamflight space station, desperately trying to save the last remnants of the vular race after its extinction on the planet Vularim.

The corruption has killed (agonizingly and horribly) almost all the vular. Brishen is emotionally exhausted, desperately keeping alive a wife and daughter in cold sleep pods for over two decades. When Brishen’s friend and veteran partner Barriken is killed, he is assigned the idealistic engineering graduate Tariku, just out of the crèche, as his new partner. Since this story is in Hot Dish, the reader can guess that Tariku will renew Brishen’s spirit through a homosexual uplift.

“Cold Sleep” is well-written, but it wallows in bleak despair. This is another story that could be easily rewritten to make the vular humans.

“Reunion” by Sisco Polaris (illustrated by Anyare) is mostly flashback, framed by a beginning and end at a high-school’s ten-year reunion. Damien, a tiger former sports jock, is married to Cheryl, a cheetah former cheerleader. She henpecks him savagely; he meekly takes it. At the reunion, Damien slips into a long flashback to when he was a 17-year-old student and spent all his time trying to get Cheryl to spread her legs; beating up Josh Henderson, a nerdy chubby bunny; and having his cock sucked by a mystery cocksucker. There’s more to “Reunion”, but it feels like 36 pages of nonstop cocksucking. This is a very male story. The story cleverly sets up how Damien could get his cock sucked for months without knowing who the mystery cocksucker is. There are clues, but the revelation back at the reunion is designed to surprise you. The story is with more animal-headed humans.

So: If you don’t care for lots of in-your-face adult sex, don’t read Hot Dish. “Loops and Knots”, “The Theorist”, “The Favor of the Gods”, “The Years of Living Dangerously Happy”, and “Reunion” are all feel-good stories. “The Hound and the Tree” and “Cold Sleep” are designed to be intellectually satisfying but emotional downers. The anthology skillfully blends them among the others. These seven are all well-written, making Hot Dish 2 definitely worth the $17.95 price – if you don’t mind lots of sex. Only “Spaces to Breathe” ought to be better.

As you can tell, I don’t care for funny-animal stories where the characters could be humans just as easily as anthro animals. If you don’t care, you’ll like Hot Dish 2 a lot better.

–Fred Patten

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

Furry Fandom, by Wikipedians. Illustrated.
Limburg an der Lahn, Germany, PediaPress, —–, trade paperback $21.65 ([v +] 258 pages).

Furry Fandom is supposedly an “all that you want to know” book about furry fandom, but with a major flaw. It’s only current to around 2010. It’s a fine book at 258 well-indexed pages and with 46 illustrations (mostly photographs) to give to a non-furry who asks what furry fandom is all about. It presents a complete overview. But the fandom has grown and otherwise changed so much since 2010 that anyone becoming a furry fan today will need more information to be brought up to date.

PediaPress is a modern print-on-demand publisher in a suburb of Mainz, Germany that is closely associated with Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia, “PediaPress was established to provide an online service that enabled Web users to create customized books from wiki content, an example of web-to-print technology.” Anyone can request a book on any subject, and “the Wikipedians” will collate all the information on that subject spread throughout “the over 4 million articles on Wikipedia in English alone” into a handy book – officially.

This Furry Fandom book does not have any publication date other than a statement that this copy was printed on April 24, 2017 at 23:51 UTC. But that does not mean the book has all Wikipedia’s information on furry fandom up to April 2017. It states that Anthrocon was held from 1997 to 2009. EuroFurence and Further Confusion are covered up to 2010. The Ursa Major Awards were presented from 2001 to 2008. (p. 44) The Furry Writers’ Guild and its Cóyotl Award, created in 2010 and 2011, are not mentioned. A four-page list of active furry conventions does not include anything after November 2010. The list of furry comic strips and webcomics includes some titles that have been discontinued since 2010 and does not include some that have become major since then. There is no section on furry specialty publishers, although Sofawolf Press is briefly mentioned – FurPlanet and Rabbit Valley are not. Dr. Kathy Gerbasi and the Anthropomorphic Research Project are not mentioned.

So is Furry Fandom worthwhile if it only goes up to 2010? Yes! It’s a great time capsule of what furry fandom was like up until then. It does include the basic information of what furry fandom is all about. It’s got some great photographs; black-&-white here, but often in color if you can find the entry on Wikipedia that they are taken from.

For ongoing activities and works that were started before 2010 and are still ongoing, Furry Fandom presents an in-depth encyclopedic description. This includes conventions like Anthrocon, Internet comic strips like Kevin & Kell, Lackadaisy, and Newshounds, and activities like the Funday PawPet Show and the Ursa Major Awards. There is an excellent gallery of 15 photographs of fursuiters.

If you are active in furry fandom, you probably know all this, but it is still a handy book to have around.

Mistakes are all very trivial. “… the concept of furry originated at a science fiction convention in 1980, when a character drawing from Steve Gallacci’s Albedo Anthropomorphics started a discussion of anthropomorphic characters in science fiction novels.” (p. 1) The discussion included anthropomorphic animals in s-f, animated movies and TV, and comic books; the greater inclusivity was what helped furry fandom separate from just another s-f group. At that 1980 convention and for the next couple of years, Gallacci had only a file folder full of loose drawings. He did not begin to publish them as Albedo Anthropomorphics until June 1984. Furry Fandom says misleadingly, “The first issue of Albedo was published in 1983.” (p. 28) Yes, there was a slim prototype Albedo #0 in Summer 1983, but it was a funny-animal Bladerunner parody, not Gallacci’s serious Erma Felna of the EDF graphic novel that kickstarted furry fandom. Marc Schirmeister was Official Editor of Rowrbrazzle for its first eighteen mailings, not fourteen. (p. 31)

Presumably the lack of a publication date means that PediaPress is giving itself the option of updating Furry Fandom someday. A more up-to-date printing will be larger and more expensive, whether it acknowledges that it’s a new edition or not. Get this, and keep an eye out for an updated edition.

Even if it is outdated, furry fans will have fun poring over Furry Fandom. It’s $21.65 well spent.

–Fred Patten

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

De Cape et de Crocs. Acte 12, Si Ce N’Est Toi…, by Alain Ayroles & Jean-Luc Masbou.
Paris, Delcourt, November 2016, hardbound €14,50 (47 [+3] pages).

The Fred Patten & Lex Nakashima plan to bring you the best French-language talking-animal comics has a real winner this time: Of Cloak and Fangs. Vol. 12, If It Isn’t You…, the twelfth & final(!) volume of De Cape et de Crocs, the 17th-century swashbuckling series parodying Cyrano de Bergerac, Molière, Montesquieu, and Co. that has been running since 1995.

Confusingly, volume 10 was originally announced as the end of the series. The main characters through vol. 10 are two wandering gentleman-swordsmen, Armand Raynal de Maupertuis (French fox) and Don Lope de Villalobos y Sangrin (Spanish wolf). They are introduced in 17th-century Venice, then a powerful Mediterranean nation. In the first volume they are betrayed and sentenced to serve as galley-slaves in Venice’s navy, where they meet fellow-slave Eusèbius, the cutest bunny-rabbit in the world. They escape, bringing Eusèbius with them. Eusèbius becomes their loyal squire-valet for the rest of the series, through adventures in Europe and on the Moon; so naïve and self-effacing that you almost forget he’s there. Volume 10 appeared to wrap everything up with a happily-ever-after ending, but the ten albums never said what the cutest bunny-rabbit in the world was doing as a Venetian galley-slave when they met him. Did readers demand an explanation? Volumes 11 and 12 answer the question.

Act 11, Twenty Months Earlier, begins as a pastiche of Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. Eusèbius, young and naïve, sets out in the French countryside to join the famous Cardinal’s Guard in Paris. The adventures he has are partly a parody of what d’Artagnan goes through at the beginning of The Three Musketeers, and partly original. Eusèbius is not the only anthropomorphic animal in 17th-century France. Others include a bear thief posing as a gypsy’s trained bear, and a duck nobleman almost buried under one of those elaborate wigs the nobility of Louis XIII’s time wore. Despite Eusèbius’ efforts to be an outstanding Cardinal’s Guard, he makes two powerful enemies: the Grand Veneur (Royal Huntsman), a human nobleman who aspires to let nothing stop him from replacing the Cardinal as the King’s prime minister; and Monsieur Fagotin, a deadly black-clad chimpanzee assassin.

Act 12, If It Isn’t You… finishes the prologue. Eusèbius is kidnapped and taken to the Court of Miracles (see Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame) where he finds that the king of the Court is his long-missing twin brother Fulgence – an exact double, but without his scruples. All the supporting characters from t. 11 are here: the Grand Veneur, Fagotin, Brioché the puppeteer, d’Ortolan the friendly Musketeer, The Bastille jailkeeper’s sweet daughter, and so on. The album’s ending is known from the beginning; Eusèbius will be condemned to a life sentence as a galley slave. Ayrolles & Masbou tell an engrossing adventure as to how he gets there.

NOTE: The following video features the creators talking about their series. It is in French. You can translate it to English if you want through YouTube’s Auto Translate – Matthias

Ayrolles pulls out all the stops in writing this final album. It’s not easy French. Be prepared for obscure and obsolete words. You had better read this at your computer, ready to pause at least once on each page to Google on some French word that you haven’t seen before.

–Fred Patten

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So a guy with a confederate fursuit was at a furry convention... pic.twitter.com/e1QQK2dmJZ

— Michelle Catlin (@CatlinNya) July 2, 2017

TROLLING ANTHROCON

The infamous Confederate fursuit got a lot of views on social media. The issue started with complaints during Anthrocon and Midwest Furfest in 2015.  By no coincidence, the symbol was pushed on the fandom at the same time as racist mass murder by Dylann Roof led to taking down Confederate flags across the USA.  Then in 2017, during a huge amount of positive news about Anthrocon, the issue bubbled up again like a turd in a punchbowl.

The fursuiter is Magnus Diridian, AKA Rob Shokawsky. He was previously known for causing disturbances by copying the fursuit of Lemonade Coyote to exploit his death for attention. For several years, Magnus was reputedly banned from MWFF and Anthrocon.  He came back to troll with the Confederate fursuit and a Trump sign that violated AC’s Code of Conduct:

Any action or behavior that causes significant interference with convention operations, excessive discomfort to other attendees, or adversely affects Anthrocon’s relationship with its guests, its venues or the public is strictly forbidden and may result in permanent suspension of membership.

Harassment includes … Conduct, dress, or speech that targets, threatens, intimidates, or is otherwise intended to cause distress to other attendees, or to members of protected classes (such as those based on race, age, religion, national origin, disability, gender, or sexual identity).

Magnus chose to bring that suit even though he has many others. There’s no pretending that it was anything but forcing politics on others, since he admits he did it because of “attack” on the flag. According to his helper, he was even  “ghosting” the con to do it. He could have attended like anyone else if he didn’t set out to cause entirely predictable negativity. To be perfectly clear, Magnus was an antagonistic outsider who did not register or support Anthrocon.

buh byyyye~ pic.twitter.com/S3vFkz0Bbx

— Ed (@That_Edward) July 2, 2017

FREE SPEECH

As clear as the problem was, it got muddied by misunderstanding. There was a post by another blogger who I like:

“I am glad that everyone had a blast at Anthrocon 2017. I could not go, but I did follow the con as closely as I could…and, there is something that has been weighing heavily on my mind… Why am I angry? Because I realize that we (as a people and fandom) or more oppressed than ever before. But, not by the public… but by our own f***ing community!!! It’s because we are not allowed to have an unpopular opinion…”

The blogger offered understanding for why people don’t like the Confederate Flag, but believed that it was part of some people’s cultural heritage and pride. “It does NOT automatically make you a racist of any kind… or a bigot.” They continued:

“This guy was doing NOTHING to harm anyone. Like people that protest on the sides of the roads, he was not attacking anyone directly, physically… he was not being violent in any way, shape, or form. He was making a ‘statement’, he was showing what he believed in. And guess what? THAT IS NOT WRONG!!! It is freedom of speech, it is freedom of expression… and as a human, he has the right to do that. As a Furry, he had the right to be there at that convention, same as anyone else.”

Their conclusion said:

“It seems pretty bad that we claim that we are an open, loving, and understanding fandom- yet we shun people because they believe differently than we do. (…) People can not even be themselves anymore without offending someone, and it’s sad. (…) I will not censor myself for the sake of delicate sensibilities… I will not censor myself because some people wanna pick and choose what it means to have freedom of speech and expression, and I will NOT censor myself for people that think that everyone else is in the wrong if they do not believe the same things… and that punishment should be reserved only for the ones with the unpopular opinion. That makes YOU the close-minded one if you think that way.”

XKCD

CONTEXT MATTERS

I left this reply anonymously so it could speak for itself:

“Magnus had already been banned from the con for provoking others. When he came back, instead of getting along he decided to provoke. He knew he was doing something wrong.

Cons are private events that happen by the goodwill of everyone involved, and if you go you’re something of a guest. That wasn’t being a good guest. Of course in the USA we have freedom of speech – but the most simple meaning of freedom of speech is that the government can’t arrest you. A con isn’t the government, or public property – it’s a private event, and the con organizers have freedom to make their rules. If they say their con is a place to have fun and be positive, and you can’t go to be negative and upset others, it’s their rules and they can ask you to leave. Same as if Magnus was in your house and you told him to leave. His freedom of speech isn’t taken away – he can do what he wants at his own con, or on a public street somewhere else.

Unfortunately it was provocative because that flag can never be separated from history of slavery, no more than a swastika can be separate in Germany’s (and it’s even illegal there). If you get familiar with the history of slavery, you can find that there was a huge propaganda campaign to try erasing that – they lied about what it meant and who was involved and what they did. The “heritage” story was invented much after the civil war and it is dishonest. That went together with racism of the 20th century, and new laws they made to make it worse, all the way into the Jim Crow era and the 1960’s.

We’re still undoing what they did wrong. Only this year, we learned that Emmett Till, the kid who was murdered for supposedly whistling at a white woman, never did that. We only know because the woman confessed in her 80’s. The KKK uses the confederate flag as their symbol and that should tell you everything about what’s wrong. They lost that war and it’s time to let it die.”

The Confederate flag is a symbol of racism: [1] A historian from the Museum of the Confederacy says the Confederate flag can never be separated from defense of slavery. [2] The flag wasn’t politically resurrected until the mid-20th century as backlash against desegregation. [3] There is a “150-year-old propaganda campaign designed to erase slavery as the cause of the war and whitewash the Confederate cause as a noble one.” [4] Besides flags, monuments for Confederate propaganda were built generations after the war. [5] Removing these monuments is like taking down statues of Stalin. [6] As recently as 7/8/17, the KKK rallied for the monuments with Confederate flags.

Idea: if you still fly the Confederate Flag, you're not allowed to use any technology or medicine invented later than 1865

— Megan Amram (@meganamram) June 19, 2015

My comment never asked the blogger to take down their post or censor themselves.  However, they gave consideration and decided to take it down on their own.  It was replaced with a new post:

I was NOT aware that he was there, deliberately provoking people… I also was not aware of Anthrocon’s policy on political propoganda which is stated in their ToS.  So while I still do not feel he should have been escorted out… I do understand the decision. A friend made a point when she said that Anthrocon is huge and gets a lot of press coverage… and he is def the type of person we do not want to be represented by. HOWEVER… this does not change my feelings of how people (the world) now treats people with the unpopular opinion. This does not change how I feel about how everything now seems to cater to those of delicate sensibilities, and it is just not realistic how we baby our population. But this is, in itself, just an opinion… and I do not expect everyone to like what I say or even agree.

Unpopular opinions often deserve care and majority opinions aren’t always right.  There are plenty of places to debate those online or in public.  Are cons the place for it? Anthrocon says: “The primary purpose of Anthrocon is for our attendees to have fun.”  The con didn’t go to Magnus’s home and tell him how to think. He went out of his way to get in other people’s faces with politics that interfered with the con’s purpose.

Let me add that the blogger is nice and sincere. (They can stay unlinked here unless they want to comment.) It can be hard to pass info without sounding like a lecture, especially with a lot of young people in this fandom, but I’m not writing to focus on that blogger. This is about Magnus and the line between opinion and truth, and trolling vs. honest speech.

A “FURRY RAIDERS” TROLLING PROJECT

Speaking as a furry who does bold speech (in a place I built for it), and speaking about young people, there’s even more to this story.  It’s a situation built for sleazy chickenhawks to swoop in and exploit.  That’s the purpose of groups like the Furry Raiders and their leader Foxler.

By no coincidence, Magnus Diridian’s roommate Ricardo Nightwing is a Furry Raider. He assisted with the incident at Anthrocon. Afterwards, pictures of Magnus were proudly posted in the Furry Raiders Facebook group where they mocked protest of Confederate flags. That’s the purpose of the whole thing. Call it indoctrination especially for their young, gullible members.

The video they’re mocking has a woman protesting Confederate flags on a car at a festival. (For context they never bothered to learn: it was in Canada, where supposed American heritage isn’t entitled to a place, and she was staff.) Notice the dishonest trick of connecting an extreme example of a “triggered SJW” with reactions the Furry Raiders provoke themselves.  They aren’t the same thing… again, it comes down to context.  The video shows a woman coming to a festival and complaining, but Magnus and Foxler go to furry cons to push their behavior on others.

Apparently it’s OK when they do it.

That sleight-of-hand with context is meant to build an “SJW” strawman/boogeyman.  In the Facebook thread, Foxler poses as victim of “same people that tell me to remove my paw print armband”.  But Foxler set out to provoke by trolling events with unmistakable Nazi iconography.  His ref sheet was tagged “nazi“, and he made public comments like “I stand by Hitler” and signed his comments “Hitler of Furry Fandom”. To pose as a victim, he later flipped the story to pretend the name was just “Fox Miller” and he didn’t know what Nazis were.

There’s a simple name for this goalpost-shifting, context-erasing manipulation: Two-faced lying.  If you see it happen, remember that you can’t be a troll and a victim at the same time.

The Furry Raiders “mission” claims to “build a stronger community with projects that challenge social obstacles”. Here, their obstacle is people who aren’t cool with racism.  But there was a rare moment of clarity for the Furry Raiders. Magnus’ helper dropped the fake “community” pose, leaving just “you can’t stop us:”

MYTHS VS. THE TRUTH

For even more evidence of how poorly informed the myths about “SJW’s” are, see the facebook comment “Watch SJW’s try to ban this movie next”.  Cry Baby is a movie by John Waters, a super fabulous gay man who also made the movie Hairspray about race integration.  Ban him? I’m fan enough to have gotten him invited to furry events. (See what I mean about myths?)

Confederate flaggers are “a ghetto of stupidity” – John Waters, maker of Cry Baby

This doesn’t have two sides when “SJW” myths are getting trumped up by trolls.  There are just reasonable complaints about negative symbols.  Again, I never asked the blogger defending Magnus to take anything down. Magnus didn’t have his fursuit taken away.  This isn’t about taking away rights or never letting go of problems. We’re discussing misinformation and trolling vs. the truth.

The truth is: negative symbols are being pushed for shock by posers who don’t care about this community. Everyone deserves more honesty about that.  The trolls believe they can’t be stopped, but everyone can point out dishonesty, stop defending them, and demand better.

Furries revere free expression.  Let’s conclude with an example of standing for it in a mature, honest, positive way:  In 2015, the Vermont Furs were banned from costuming at a public festival because of a law against masks.  So they got support from the ACLU and local news, went to their city council and got the laws changed. The law still regulates masked KKK activity, but now it allows peaceful expression too. Sounds ideal to me, and what reasonable furries want.

• Vermont town selectively bans fursuiters: Prejudice complaint and update (Dogpatch Press)
• Free to Be Furry? Group Fights to Wear Animal Costumes in Burlington. (Seven Days Vermont)
• An Update from the ACLU – and We did it! (Vermont Furs)
• With Furries And Free Speech In Mind, Burlington Redrafts Anti-Mask Ordinance (Vermont Public Radio)

UPDATE – Ricardo Nightwing posted a response vid (I left further response to it in the comments on Youtube.) Ricardo also posted about leaving the Furry Raiders, and I think we can all relate to going through a process of change and maturity in life.

Responses by the Furry Raiders have included more flags and telling me: “there’s always a burning oven ready for you.”

Furries: "people who do that are being despicable losers"
Loser: "We'll never stop"
Furries: "We know"

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) July 12, 2017

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

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

MoonDust: Falling From Grace, by Ton Inktail
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, December 2015, trade paperback $14.99 (380 [+1] pages), Kindle $4.99

This is one of the best science-fiction novels I’ve ever read.

It’s also one of the best furry novels I’ve ever read. Humanity is extinct; transgenic animal people, created for the war effort, are all that are left. The protagonist, Imogene Haartz, is a young caribou (reindeer)-human hybrid; she shaves her fur when sent by the military to a hot climate, and takes prescribed drugs to suppress her antlers’ growth. Who needs antlers in the Army? Everyone is a boar or a rabbit or a ferret or an otter or a tiger or some other animal, whether the species is specified or not.

It’s also one of the bleakest novels I’ve ever read. Everyone is miserable until they die. (Metaphorically.) Imogene has grown up in the mid-22nd century in the rubble of Helsinki. The world has evolved until there are only two super-powers left, the UNA (United Nations of America) and the Pan-Asian Federation. If they aren’t in a shooting war, they’re in a cold war so frigid that everyone expects it to boil over at every moment. Imogene’s father was killed in the last active fighting.

“Imogene stared up at her mother’s apartment building. Old and gray, it rose to ten stories of utilitarian serviceability. Of the four buildings that had surrounded a small park, only it survived. Two others were rubble, while the fourth clawed at the sky with broken, concrete fingers.

Most of Helsinki was like that. Twelve years after the United Nations of America ‘liberated’ the city, the cleanup effort was far from complete. Especially away from the wealthy neighborhoods. Imogene couldn’t remember what it was like before the UNA. Derelict buildings and mounds of broken concrete seemed the natural state of things.” (p. 11)

Imogene has gotten out of the UNA Army at 18 after her mandatory military service, prepared to rejoin her fiancé, get a civilian job, and rejoin life. She finds that her boyfriend hasn’t waited for her, and there are no civilian jobs for a teenager with only military training.

“She wished for the thousandth time since returning that she’d picked something other than demolitions for her military specialization. At least if she’d gone in for motor pool she’d have a chance. More people would pay you to fix a car than to blow one up.” (p. 14)

After searching fruitlessly for months, she goes to a UNA recruiting office to re-enlist. Only this time, instead of the Army where she’ll be sent to another hot-climate city that’s mostly broken concrete, she picks the Luna Corps – the UNA’s space program. It’s the one area of service that’s neat and shiny instead of depressing – and there are so few volunteers that she feels secure of getting in. (Even if it means taking more antler-suppression drugs. Who needs antlers in a spacesuit?)

The s-f nature of the novel is evident:

“There, tunneled into the jagged peaks of the Atlas Mountains, lay Toubkal Spaceport. One of four major launch sites under UNA control, Toubkal’s 500 kilometre-long linear induction catapult kept up a steady stream of traffic into low Earth orbit.

Imogene’s middle tightened. The catapult was basically a large-bore electric cannon. Was the distance she was about to put between herself and all her earthly problems really worth becoming a caribou-shaped artillery shell?” (p. 23)

So is the furry nature:

“A dramatization of the Unification Wars, the vid focused on the valor and heroism of the transgenic soldiers, glossing over the fact they were counted as chattel and had no choice but to fight. That wasn’t the only creative liberty taken, but it rankled Imogene the most. True, she hadn’t known her grandparents, let alone the great-grands who’d been forced to war, but it still served the humans right their own bio-weapons got loose and their animal slaves were the only ones immune.” (p. 33)

The novel introduces Imogene’s squadmates on the Moon: Sergeant Robert Hendricks (Dalmatian), Fiona Whiting (polar bear), Ryan Sanders (ground squirrel), Victor Vidal (puma), Bruce Andersen (stag), Lauren Porter (lynx), and Alexei (white rabbit). There are several chapters showing the military in peacetime. Imogene gets to know her squadmates; she makes friends and enemies. The the war boils over – this is not a spoiler since the cover by Katrin “LeSoldatMort” Buttig shows the spacesuited Imogene looking at nuclear detonations on Earth. The last half of the book describes Imogene’s and her team’s desperate fight to survive, as they hope to return to a UNA base – if there is anything to return to – and learn what has happened to Earth.

MoonDust: Falling From Grace is a harrowing, exhausting thriller:

“They rested as long as their dwindling power supplies let them dare, then struck out across the flats.

Smooth, dusty terrain fled past under Imogene’s loping bounds. The valley floor was easy, and even the rolling foothills hardly slowed their march. Scattered pea-size bits of rock and metal continued to drizzle, but she ignored them as much as she could. The best course of action was to hurry on to Borda.

As they climbed, the drizzle turned to a ballistic hail, pelting in from the north. She kept her visor pointed down and her legs pushing her forward. Then a wave of larger impacts broke over the landscape, and Imogene’s blood turned cold.

Her gaze darted over the bleak surroundings. No cover. All they could do was sprint for the still distant mountains.

Towers of dust shot up from the larger strikes, leaving craters the size of manholes. She dodged around the holes, praying she and her friends wouldn’t be hit.” (p. 218)

It becomes a bit melodramatic at the end, but the reader is kept guessing until the last page whether Imogene or any of her team will survive. The novel’s furry nature is both deep – Imogene considers a trans-species romance, and whether the inability to have children would be a serious problem – and superficial. All of the characters are clearly funny animals, who could be turned into humans with only minor rewriting.

It may be pertinent that the author’s only other credits (as Ton Inktail or a.k.a. Tonin; the © is Andy Rohde) are two equally harrowing thrillers, in the FurPlanet anthologies Abandoned Places and Bleak Horizons. MoonDust: Falling From Grace will leave you eager for Ton Inktail’s next novel.

–Fred Patten

• Buy on Amazon
• Ton Inktail’s Website

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Hey everyone! I’m Furry trash! But more than that, I’m KickStarter Trash too! I thought it’d be a good idea to occasionally show some Furry stuff I’ve found on KickStarter for the folks who might not be regulars to the site, and share what they might be missing. These posts may often feature one time offer only listings.  (This first edition is a little quick and dirty, due to the time constraint of the first entry.)

MADCAP – This is a TOON based RPG with lots of renowned artists lending their talents to the book and the game is coming from the creators of IronClaw. Ends TODAY.

• Back again for the first time, despite popular demand… it’s the singular, particular, jugular and avuncular MADCAP, the role-playing game of cartoon screwball action! It’s the game that stars the best person we could find on short notice: YOU. And you’ll have a supporting cast of your friends, your compatriots, your hangers-on, your contemporaries — heck, anyone who could hold a pencil by the right end, they could play this game with you!

Rabbit Island – A 4X Territory Control tile board game with buh-nees.

• Lead your tribe to explore a new island every game! Build up your civilization with the value of the Carrot, and the help of special Action Cards. Can you conquer your opponents in 20 rounds?

Trash Pandas card game – A small push-your-luck style card game… And I’m Furry Trash, as previously stated. This one is a limited run of only 500 copies being made, and it’s cheap. Why Not? said I.

• Trash Pandas is easy to learn, portable, and fun for all ages. In Trash Pandas, players are raucous raccoons, tipping over trash cans for food (and shiny objects). Players push their luck to acquire more trash cards, but must stash them in order for them to count as points at the end of the game.

Bar Pig – Looking at the rules, it’s a zany party game that often calls in your place of play as part of the chaos, with losers of each round getting a penalty more than winners getting ahead. So don’t build your house with Straw! (and keep your play area clear of tripping hazards.) Hurr.

• BaRPiG’s rules are simple, and the game uses creative player input as well as the surroundings in which it’s being played. BaRPiG can be played anywhere and everywhere, with any group of friends, and every game will be different from the last.

Paws and Padlocks – A tile-placing race for treasure using locked and rotating rooms to trip up the other players.

• Paws and Padlocks is a family-friendly dungeon crawler where you play as adventurers breaking into Slime Castle to steal the evil Slime Queen’s treasure. Build your path to the treasure by laying out room cards on the board and try to mess up another player’s path along the way. While exploring the castle, you can fight Slime monsters, open treasure chests, find interesting items, and trigger events that change up the game!

Can I Pet Your Werewolf? – No personal comment needed! They explain it just fine. ;3

• Can I Pet Your Werewolf? is a light-hearted anthology featuring tales of friendship, family, and romance shared between those who get hairy under a full moon. Just because they have sharp teeth and claws doesn’t mean they have to be a monster out for blood. It is organized by Kel McDonald (Sorcery 101 and Misfits of Avalon) and co-edited by Kel McDonald and Molly Muldoon.

The Tim’rous Beastie Anthology – Again they did a fine job explaining exactly what this is; A comic anthology featuring mostly non-anthro animals.

• Tim’rous Beastie is a 260-page, black-and-white comic anthology about small lives in a big, big world. This is a collection by and for those of us who grew up inspired by Redwall, Watership Down, The Plague Dogs, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, and other tales of brave and imperiled critters defying their size and place in the natural order. 

Catapulted – Issue One – Literal Cats in Space! Only funding for the first issue though.

• Catapulted is a black and white comic book about cats sent into space during the space race in the 1950’s. Prior to manned missions to space, America experimented by sending chimps into space, Russia sent dogs and France… they sent cats (true story). Follow one cats epic journey as it is Catapulted into space and experience the connections our feline protagonist makes with every person it interacts with, as it survives harsh and changing conditions. Lost cosmonauts, a conspiracy theory and something altogether surprising await readers in Catapulted. If you like sci-fi, alternate history or you have soft spot for cats, this is the book for you.

Katze vol.2 – More cats, because why not?

• What is Katze? Katze is a comic book showcasting the cats Chloé, Azaelle and Mustache. The story revolves around these hairballs, their interactions, their discoveries and their fears, but also the love and hatred they feel towards each other. Volume 1 presented chapters 1, 2 and 3, where Chloe arrived in her new home, then the awakening of the mistress and finally the discovery of playing with cardboard boxes.Volume 2 presents chapters 4, 5 and 6. The comic begins with the arrival of Azaelle in her new home when she was young, then we see Chloé and Azaelle meeting a hamster, and we finish the book with the cats that get a bath.

– Happywulf

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

Murrin Road, by L. B. Kitty
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, October 2016, trade paperback $9.00 (171 pages), Kindle $3.00.

This is an Irish novel with funny animals. It begins:

“Lexy stood hunched and huddled by a billboard as the rain came streaking down, sometimes blowing along Murrin Road in waves. His fur matting where the moisture had penetrated, droplets resting on his whiskers and breathing heavily, he looked at the gleam of shining rails before him, and as he took a step out from the end of the road he could hear the hum of the vibrating steel.” (p. 1)

Lexy is a black cat in the gritty industrial part of London. While he is standing out and getting soaked in the rain, a truck roars up, throws something out, and speeds away.

“He walked slowly towards whatever it was the moved in curled flicking motions like a leech sucking goodness from the gutter. The rain was now really running through his clothes, it felt like it was pouring through his soul, could it cleanse him? He stood two foot away and looked down; in the faint orange glow of a distant street-lamp he saw a familiar shape. Except for its lumpy looking end, he recognized a Feline figure, he leaned down and saw that whoever it was looked like they had been beaten, bloodied, tied up and even had a sack placed over their head. He reached his paw slowly down ‘Just a little further…’” (p. 2)

Excuse me for not putting [sic.] throughout that quotation. The something is a sack with a white cat in it, who says to just call him Kitty. Brian O’Connor, “The Celtic Tiger” (he’s a Tiger – Kitty the author capitalizes all animal nouns), a mob boss, has ordered that Kitty be disposed of. Lexy objects to having trash dumped on his doorstep, so he takes Kitty and marches into Brian’s working-class pub headquarters to complain. Brian tells all his lieutenants to shoot Lexy. Kitty saves him, and the black and white cats become an Odd Couple-type best friends and eventually very chaste gay lovers.

Murrin Road is a good example of how not to write a furry novel – or a novel at all. The characters are unusually superficially funny animals. A couple of major supporting characters are Terri, a barmaid, and Lee, a biker. Terri and Lee are identified as a Fox and a Tiger when they are introduced, and then their species is hardly mentioned for the rest of the novel. They might as well be humans. “By this time Lee was awake and making coffee, Junior was sitting up eating plain toast.” (p. 92) That’s a tiger drinking coffee and a wolf eating toast. Inconsistently, some characters are named by species almost every time they are mentioned, like Marriot, an Otter:

“Sat the other side of the table was a young Otter who was smartly dressed in a pale yellow suit jacket, a tight t-shirt which showed his abs well and his muscled legs were pressed against tight grey trousers. He held in his paws a black cane that was topped with a well polished silver ball, Lexy thought he looked rather strange. Behind him were casually dressed dock workers, a few Otters and some various Canines but it was difficult to make them out in the shadows the other side of the room.” (p. 12)

(Scatter more [sic’s] through there.) There is fantasy in Murrin Road. Lexy can burst into flame:

“‘Don’t!’ cried a young blue haired Arctic Fox.

The Vixen came through the door just in time to see the Husky’s paw make contact with Lexy, and then she heard him yelp in pain as his the material of his glove melted and his clothes caught fire.

‘Too late’ she said, turning to the rest of the unit, ‘Call for back up’.

Lexy felt like he was a raging fire, he felt like he was going to burn away, until suddenly the feeling that had been building exploded. A fireball spun from him in the middle of the room, his clothes turned to ash in an instant, his fur emblazoned with red circular patterns all over. Kitty watched in amazement as the fireball expanded in the centre of his lounge, this was his cue to leave and he started running down the levels of the fire escape. As he did so he found he was being shot at through the windows in the stairwell but cowering as he ran he made it to the bottom and finally he jumped and landed swiftly amongst the bushes.” (p. 25)

Who is Lexy? For that matter, who is Kitty? Why does the Mob want to get rid of him? Why does Kitty befriend Lexy before anyone notices anything unusual about him? Who are the mysterious government agents who want Lexy back?

It’s not really worth plowing through Murrin Road to find out. Some other errors throughout the novel are site for sight, thrown for throne, draws for drawers, “An few hours later”, “Meanwhile, stood in the Italian Gardens in Hyde Park, Brian O’Connor paced up and down” (should be “standing”, not “stood”), the cats have prehensile tails – how many bad examples do you want?

According to his Twitter account, L. B. Kitty stands for LexyBadKitty. His photo is on DeviantArt; he’s 24 and lives in Ireland. The cover artist, Larry Walker-Tonks, also has a website. Kitty needs a proofreader, or a Beta reader, or something.

–Fred Patten

• Buy on Amazon

Since 2001, the Ursa Major awards have promoted public choice for the best furry stuff in many categories (movies, art, books, magazines, and etc.)  Since 2011, The Coyotl Awards have featured the Furry Writer’s Guild choice for best fiction – “an anthropomorphic Nebula equivalent to the Ursas’ Hugos.”

The Ursas are popular and the Coyotls are juried by merit.  Both are an awesome way for fans to discover works by each other, and prove how furries are more than underdogs compared to other fandoms anchored on central media properties.  They can help furries to Be The Media.

The Ursas will have a new Fursuit category next year. That has been demanded for many years but not added while there was debate about defining it. Designers, builders, wearers, and even photographers have some claims about inclusion – how do you award a team? Find out when voting starts for 2017.

The staff of Dogpatch Press (Fred, Pup Matthias, and I) are honored to win the 2016 Ursa for Best Magazine. That helps to keep cool stuff coming. Give yourselves pats for inspiring it.  If you want more good stuff in the furry news niche, try these: Flayrah, Culturally F’d, Furry.Today, InFurNation, Fur Media, Furrymedia, [adjective][species], Furry News Network, Gaming Furever, Furryfandom.es, and Furry Stammtische.

Fred Patten tells more. (- Patch)  

The 2016 Ursa Major Awards were announced on Friday, June 30th at the Anthrocon convention in Pittsburgh. The Ursa Major Awards, for best anthropomorphic works of the past calendar year, are presented by the Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association (ALAA) in twelve categories, and are voted upon by the public on the Ursa Major Awards website. There were 1,446 votes this year, most from the U.S. but some from throughout the rest of the world. Below are listed the winners and nominees of the 2016 Ursa Major Awards.

Best Anthropomorphic Motion Picture

Winner

• Zootopia (Directed by Byron Howard, Rich Moore, and Jared Bush; February 11)

Runners-Up (in descending number of votes)

• Finding Dory (Directed by Andrew Stanton and Angus MacLane; June 17)
• Sing (Directed by Garth Jennings and Christophe Lourdelet; December 21)
• Kung Fu Panda 3 (Directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson and Alessandro Carloni; January 29)
• The Secret Life of Pets (Directed by Chris Renaud and Yarrow Cheney; July 8)

Best Anthropomorphic Dramatic Short Work or Series

Winner

• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (Directed by James Thiessen, Jim Miller, Tim Stuby, and Denny Lu; Season 6 episodes 1 to 143 [TV])

Runners-Up (in descending number of votes)

• The Lion Guard (Directed by Howy Parkins; Season 1 episodes 1 to 22 [TV])
• Bunnicula (Directed by Jessica Borutski, Maxwell Atoms, Robert F. Hughes, Matthew Whitlock, and Ian Wasseluk; Season 1 episodes 1 to 8 [TV])
• Littlest Pet Shop (Directed by Joel Dickie, Steven Garcia, and Mike Myhre; Season 4 episode 10 to Season 4 episode 26 [TV])
• Petals (Directed by Andrea Gallo and Alvaro Dominguez; November 29 [student film])

Best Anthropomorphic Novel

Winner

• My Diary, by Fredrick Usiku Kruger, Lieutenant of the Rackenroon Hyena Brigade, by Kathy Garrison Kellog (The Cross Time Cafe; April 2)

Runners-Up (in descending number of votes)

• Sixes Wild: Echoes, by Tempe O’Kun (FurPlanet Productions; June 30)
• Dog Country, by Malcolm F. Cross (Amazon Digital Services; March 28)
• Fracture, by Hugo Jackson (Inspired Quill; September 1)
• The Origin Chronicles: Mineau, by Justin Swatsworth (Dolphyn Visions; June 14)

Best Anthropomorphic Short Fiction

Winner

• 400 Rabbits, by Alice “Huskyteer” Dryden, in Gods With Fur (FurPlanet Productions; June 30)

Runners-Up (in descending number of votes)

• A Gentleman of Strength, by Dwale, in Claw the Way to Victory (Jaffa Books; January 24)
• Questor’s Gambit, by Mary E. Lowd, in Gods With Fur (FurPlanet Productions; June 30)
  Marge the Barge, by Mary E. Lowd, in Claw the Way to Victory (Jaffa Books; January 24)
• Sheeperfly’s Lullaby, by Mary E. Lowd, in GoAL #2 (Goal Publications; March 27)

Best Anthropomorphic Other Literary Work

Winner

• Gods With Fur, ed. by Fred Patten (FurPlanet Productions; June 30 [anthology])

Runners-Up (in descending number of votes)

• Claw the Way to Victory, ed. by AnthroAquatic (Jaffa Books; January 24 [anthology])
• ROAR volume 7, ed. by Mary E. Lowd (Bad Dog Books; June 30 [anthology])
• The Muse, by Alex Cockburn (Rabbit Valley Publishing; March [background booklet for Lucid’s Dream])
• Hot Dish #2, ed. by Dark End (Sofawolf Press; December 1 [anthology])

Best Anthropomorphic Non-Fiction Work

Winner

• The Art of Zootopia, by Jessica Julius (Chronicle Books; March 8 [book; making of feature film])

Runners-Up (in descending number of votes)

• Fursonas (Directed by Dominic Rodriguez; May 10 [documentary film])
• 17 Misconceptions About Furries and the Furry Fandom (Culturally F’d #23; February 11 [podcast])
• CSI: Fur Fest; The Unsolved Case of the Gas Attack at a Furry Convention, by Jennifer Swann (VICE Media; February 10 [Internet])
• Burned Furs and How You Perceive Porn (Culturally F’d: After Dark; October 6 [podcast])

Best Anthropomorphic Graphic Story

Winner

• TwoKinds, by Tom Fischbach (Internet; January 6 to December 25)

Runners-Up (in descending number of votes)

• Swords and Sausages, by Jan (Internet; January 10 to December 25)
• Lackadaisy, by Tracy J. Butler (Internet; Lackadaisy Sabbatical to Lackadaisy Headlong)
• Lucid’s Dream, by Alex Cockburn (Rabbit Valley Publishing; March)
• Endtown, by Aaron Neathery (Internet; January 1 to December 30)

New UMA lucite trophy that replaced framed certificates last year.

Best Anthropomorphic Comic Strip

Winner

• Housepets!, by Rick Griffin (Internet; January 1 to December 30)

Runners-Up (in descending number of votes)

• Savestate, by Tim Weeks (Internet; January 6 to December 28)
• Carry On, by Kathy Garrison (Internet; January 1 to December 30)
• Kevin & Kell, by Bill Holbrook (Internet; January 1 to December 31)
• Doc Rat, by Jenner (Internet; January 1 to December 29)

Best Anthropomorphic Magazine

Winner

• Dogpatch Press, ed. by Patch Packrat (Internet; January 4 to December 20)

Runners-Up (in descending number of votes)

• Fur What It’s Worth (Podcast; Season 5 episode #8 to Season 6 episode #8)
• InFurNation, ed. by Rod O’Riley (Internet; January 1 to December 31)
• Flayrah, ed. by crossaffliction and GreenReaper (Internet; January 1 to December 29)
• Fangs and Fonts (Podcast; episodes #57 to #72)

Best Anthropomorphic Published Illustration

Winner

• Tracy J. Butler, cover of Anthrocon 2016 Souvenir Book

Runners-Up (in descending number of votes)

• Teagan Gavet, cover of Gods With Fur, ed. by Fred Patten (FurPlanet Productions, June 30)
• Iskra, “Autumn”, FurAffinity, October 22
• Jenn ‘Pac’ Rodriguez, cover of Claw the Way to Victory, ed. by AnthroAquatic (Jaffa Books, January 24)
• Dolphyn, “Hey Baby, You’re the Cat’s Meow!” in Anthrocon 2016 Souvenir Book

Best Anthropomorphic Game

Winner

• Major \ Minor (Developer: Klace; Publisher: Steam; October 11)

Runners-Up (in descending number of votes)

• Pokémon Sun & Moon (Developer: Game Freak; Publishers: Nintendo and the Pokémon Company; November 18)
• Overwatch (Developer and Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment; May 24)
• Stories: The Path of Destinies (Developer and Publisher: Spearhead Games; April 12)
• Bear Simulator (Developer and Publisher: Farjay Studios; February 26)

Best Anthropomorphic Website

Winner

• Fur Affinity (Internet [furry art & discussion])

Runners-Up (in descending number of votes)

• E621 (Internet [furry art & discussion])
• WikiFur (Internet [furry wiki])
• The Furry Writers’ Guild (Internet [FWG news & discussion])
• Culturally F’d, ed. by Arrkay and Underbite (YouTube [furry history & sociology])

Next year’s presentation venue will be at the FurDU convention, May 4-6, 2018, in Surfers Paradise, Queensland, Australia. In addition, the Ursa Major Awards are adding a thirteenth category beginning this year, for Best Anthropomorphic Fursuit, but with special rules. See the UMA website.

2016 Cóyotl Awards

The 2016 Cóyotl Awards, for the best anthropomorphic fiction of 2016, were announced on Saturday, May 15th at the Furlandia convention in Portland. They’re posted online at the Cóyotl Awards website and Twitter account (@TheCoyotlAwards).

Below are listed the winners and nominees of the 2016 Cóyotl Awards.  The winners are listed first and in bold.

Best Novel

• The Digital Coyote by Kris Schnee
• Black Angel by Kyell Gold
• Dog Country by Malcolm F. Cross
• Flower’s Curse by Madison Keller
• Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada

Best Novella

• The Goat by Bill Kieffer
• Culdesac by Robert Repino
• The Time He Desires by Kyell Gold

Best Short Story

• 400 Rabbits by Alice “Huskyteer” Dryden
• A Gentleman of Strength by Dwale
• Old-Dry-Snakeskin by Ross Whitlock
• The Torch by Chris “Sparf” Williams

Best Anthology

• Gods with Fur edited by Fred Patten
• Claw the Way to Victory edited by AnthroAquatic
• Hot Dish #2 edited by Dark End

The Gods with Fur anthology has the Best Short Story winner, “400 Rabbits” by Alice Dryden.  Gods with Fur also won the 2016 Ursa Major Award.

– Fred Patten

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

Plowed, edited by Andres Cyanni Halden.
Dallas, TX, FurPlanet Productions, December 2014, trade paperback $19.95 (212 pages), e-book $9.95.

This is a mature content book.  Please ensure that you are of legal age to purchase this material in your state or region. (publisher’s advisory)

The catchphrase for Plowed is “Ten Foxes – Ten Farms – Loads of Plowing”. This is an anthology of “ten saucy stories” all featuring foxes on farms with much explicit m/m sex.

The fox in “A Little Drop of Poison” by editor Andres Cyanni Halden is narrator Taslim Hajjar, a 20-year-old fennec. Since fennecs are North African foxes, it makes sense that Taslim is a Muslim. He’s the son of a rich Saudi father who is specializing in acquiring European vineyards and selling expensive wines to restaurants. (The Qur’an just says that Muslims shouldn’t drink alcohol; not that they can’t raise and sell it to unbelievers.) Tas is with his father inspecting a vineyard he intends to buy. The bored youth sneaks off to relax alone in the solitude of the vineyard’s wine cellars. He’s found there by one of the vineyard’s workers, “a very large, jet black bull setting down a wine cask beside one of the large racks.” The massive bull, Leeroy, can scent that the little fennec is very aroused by him. And Leeroy is a dom while Tas is a sub.

“‘Now,’ he said, his free paw trailing up my arm, across my shoulder, all the way up to lightly brush across one of my ears. ‘I’ve always been told fennec foxes like having their ears rubbed.’ He ran his rough finger along the edge, his touch surprisingly delicate. ‘Friend of mine told me it gets ‘em all hot and heavy.’” (p. 12)

That’s only the beginning of a very NSFW scene.

“Academic Fulfillment” by Danath is almost the opposite. The two main characters are Gerrard, a large Falkland Islands fox (extinct since 1876 in real life) often mistaken for a wolf (“Gerrard was handsome. Tall at six-foot-three, he was mostly muscle, topping in at 210 pounds. Despite the thickness of his pelt, his muscles were visible underneath […]” – p. 23), taking time out from college to work at a large North American ranch that caters to tourists; and Anthony, the bored 20-year-old, cute, openly-gay mouse son of a couple of the tourists. (“Anthony stared at the fox’s chest for a few moments before he realized he was almost drooling. Dragging his eyes away from the display, he blushed and returned to pick at the salad on his tray.” – p. 29) Gerrard and Anthony get to talking, and Gerrard invites Anthony to join some of the other genuine ranchhands. They get high smoking pot, and after the others leave, get into their NSFW romance; but as equals, not dom/sub. Gerrard decides to return to college as Anthony’s roommate.

“Aspirations” by K. M. Hirosaki also has a college fox working on a ranch. Sitka is an arctic fox interning on a ranch for the summer. But he’s afraid he’s made a mistake.

“Then, of course, there was the heat. He knew it would be uncomfortable, and he’d thought he’d braced himself for it, and he’d been wrong. Being an arctic fox in the middle of the desert was bad enough, and having to wear denim pants over his fur, and then leather chaps over the denim made him feel like he was broiling underneath all his clothes.” (p. 41)

Besides roasting and having harder labor than he’d expected, Sitka had hoped to get some m/m action with one of the handsome regular ranchhands — Checo, a coyote; Javier, a kit fox, or Greaser, another coyote. But it doesn’t look at first like any of them is gay. Boy, is he wrong! This is another dom/sub tale, with Sitka as the sub.

The protagonist of “Foxtrot” by Tym is Harold Allende, a Darwin’s fox. This is another college-student-at-a summer-job-on-a-ranch. The difference is that it isn’t entirely voluntary, and the setting is the Argentine Pampas. Harold’s grandparents came to San Francisco from Chile. He decided to see where they came from during summer vacation; took a ship to Buenos Aires and was taking a train to Santiago; was robbed partway and took a job on a ranch in the Pampas to make enough money to either finish his journey or go back to Buenos Aires and call his parents to bail him out.

Harold meets Llewellyn Sinclair, a brown horse globetrotting after being discharged (honorably) from the U.S. Army. The two English-speakers get together, and NSFW erotica ensues. After, Llewellyn leaves to continue his globetrotting, but he gives Harold enough money to return to Buenos Aires. Under other circumstances, this could be a Most Unforgettable Character I Ever Met story.

“Irony and Woodwork” by Whyte Yoté is the first real story here, rather than just an erotic incident. The setting is the rural Midwest shortly after the Civil War. The narrator is Zach, an adolescent maned wolf farmboy. Maned wolves are really tall foxes, whose visible sexual differences are so small that it’s difficult to tell the males and females apart except by a close look. Whyte Yoté takes advantage of this for his story.

“‘Sir, please,’ I protest, paws up in defense, though I’m still smiling. ‘It’s my fault you’ll be up late. Pop’s already fit to skin me if I don’t get a move on. He’d be awful pleased to find out I helped. Even more if we get done early.’ I can’t keep the double meaning from sneaking in, but no point in trying to cover it up. We both know my reputation, even if Pop’s oblivious. Thank the Lord.” (p. 79)

Other characters besides Zach are Spiller, a big black stallion, and Morgan, a bison. Will it be a threesome, or will they take turns?

“Services Rendered” by Jeeves takes advantage of modern farming, which is no longer profitable except for large, commercial farms. Dale is a late-20s bat-eared fox (fennec?) auto mechanic answering a call from Carmichael, a 41-year-old Doberman farmer. His tractor engine has died; he’s frightened tat the old engine can’t be repaired any more; he can’t afford a new engine and without his tractor he can’t save his crops… It’s lucky that the two characters are gay and can commiserate with each other.

In “Sticky” by D. J. Fahl, Charlie DeCroix is a gray fox recently hired as a cook on a Vermont farm. The farm is snowed in during winter, but the kitchen is warm and Charlie doesn’t worry while he prepares dinner. Then Tom, the farmer, comes in.

“The wolverine got closer to the fox as he growled lowly, ‘The hands are stuck in town. Road is closed down.’

‘Oh dear,’ Charlie looked at the oven. ‘Then I made way too much food for just the two of us.’

Charlie jumped as he felt a large paw land on his shoulder and squeezed. ‘You didn’t hear me right, fox boy. I said the hands are stuck in town.’

‘Uh,’ Charlie gulped a bit, feeling the wolverine pressing closer into his big bushy gray tail.” (pgs. 139-140)

Tom is a dom. It’s lucky that Charlie is a sub.

The protagonist of “The Fox Says Neigh” by Ajax B. Coriander is Layton, a chubby red fox who is steaming because “his ex decided to run off with a dumb blonde twink whore and torch three years of their life together” (p. 151), also leaving him with a reservation for a weekend of kinky sex at a farm bed and breakfast for doubles. Even though Layton is no longer part of a couple, he goes alone. “Owner” is a Saint Bernard dom with a whip who calls Layton a pony and whips him on all fours into the barn with the rest of the ponies – King, a husky, and Little Princess, a big stallion. Much NSFW BDSM horseplay ensues.

The fox in “Weekend Pass”, by Andres Cyanni Halden again, is Siberian with black and silver fur, but he’s American. His name is only “Mrs. Samson” because he’s married to Mr. Samson, a giant stallion, and he likes “Mrs. Samson” to wear a dress and play the wife of the farm. But there doesn’t seem to be any secret about “her” real sex, and when Mr. Samson, Carson, is away from the farm on business, “Mrs. Samson” runs everything – and “she’s” free to share sex with any of the farmhands, who include handsome horses, dogs, wolves, cougars, and “her” favorite, Carlos, a ram. Sometimes Mr. and Mrs. Samson have a threesome, and M. Samson lets “her” pick the third.

“Weeping Bear Valley” by Ajax B. Coriander again features Pablo, a crab fox, thrown out of his home at 19 for being gay, and Jack, a slightly older badger. Jack works on a ranch and gets Pablo a job there, too. Pablo keeps his sexuality a secret. A few years later, some missing cattle are reported seen in far-off Weeping Bear Valley, and Jack and Pablo ride out to fetch them. This story is more active than most, with Jack saving Pablo’s life, but the payoff is the same: Pablo’s gayness is revealed, Jack turns out to swing the same way, and there is a happy NSFW climax.

Okay. I don’t swing the m/m way, so Plowed (cover by Soros) isn’t meant for me. I can say that all ten stories have good writing, but the repetitive fox-on-a-farm/ranch setup becomes tiresome. This reader became more interested in seeing what type of fox and in what role he will appear in the next story. The worst aspect (to me) is that, except for Whyte Yoté’s story, they’re all just setups for extensive explicit m/m erotic scenes; often very brief setups. There’s no followup. Plowed is an anthology for those interested in lots of explicit m/m sex, rather than in stories that go anywhere.

– Fred Patten

• Buy on Furplanet
• Buy at Bad Dog Books
• Cover artist, Soro

July 3, 9:30 PM – 2:30 AM

DNA Lounge, 375 11th St, San Francisco

Facebook event page

“Bring a dead stiff squirrel and get in free!”  Yes, that’s a real long-time promise by Death Guild. I can’t say what happens to the squirrels, but I can tell you about this legendary club night. It’s the longest running one for weird dark music in North America. That means gothic rock, industrial, darkwave, EBM and synthpop, with an ambiance like The Addams Family gone cyberpunk:

In Death Guild’s 24+ years of operation, they must have seen a lot of squirrels.  I don’t know if that ever included the patrons, but now it can because of a neat subcultural confluence. See, San Francisco isn’t just a good place for dark aesthetics. It’s also Furry Mecca with the world’s most dense population of furry fans. And furverts. Unapologetic ones who might hide a squirrel where the sun don’t shine. Kidding!!!  I’m joking about the consenting-adult patrons of Wild Things, one of the world’s only open-invite parties for furry kink. It’s usually hosted at The Citadel BDSM club, but this time gets the upstairs at DNA Lounge.

It’s just a dance party.  No wardrobe malfunctions allowed, but otherwise, go wild with costuming – from fur or latex bodysuits to rubber pup masks. “Dressing up is highly encouraged.”

Info for costume changing: Previous parties had a draped area inside. This time you’re on your own, so it’s recommended to use the Costco parking garage down the street for a bit of off-street cover.  If you’re there earlier, try a pre-dance meetup at SOMA Streatfood or Wicked Grounds kink cafe.

This mutant party happened by relationship with Gretchen Weeners, DJ at local goth clubs. Wild Things organizers are fans of the music, and acquainted with the proprietor of DNA Lounge.  The patrons might find it an odd mix… but that’s good, it’s how some of the best fun happens.

Me, having fun at DNA Lounge

Some more unlikely crossover with these subcultures.

• VNV Nation, Skinny Puppy, industrial music and furries: an inexplicable multi-nerd connection
• Freaky Furry Music – from the punk, goth and industrial underground
• The Vietnamese Mariachi Furry Drag Show Goth Club (see half way down)
• At Burning Man, here’s a furry battle in Death Guild’s Thunderdome.

Below is a fresh new tune they should play from Ghost Twin (it has cool lyrics about riding Griffins in space). Then there’s an obscure older gem from Ashtrayhead (side project of industrial band Cubanate.) And a vid from Death Guild past.

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

Here’s the first original short story anthology from Goal Publications, Symbol of a Nation, edited by Fred Patten.  It will be released at Anthrocon 2017 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania over the June 29-July 3 five-day weekend.  Find Goal Publications there at F19 in the dealer’s room!

Symbol of a Nation is an all-original anthology of 11 short stories and novelettes featuring the anthropomorphized official animal (or bird) symbols of nations. (The call for submissions said what counts.) This is designed to appeal to both s-f & fantasy fans, and fans of political science.

Some of them include: Belgium – lion. Namibia – oryx. Chile – Andean condor. Romania – lynx. Denmark – mute swan. Singapore – lion. Italy – wolf. Spain – bull. Malaysia – tiger. U.S.A. – bald eagle. Mauritius – dodo (extinct). Vietnam – water buffalo.

From a famous extinct animal bioengineered to new life, to animal/bird astronauts, to animals adapted to their nation’s environments, to a 19-century heraldic animal struggling to remain relevant in today’s world, these are stories that will make you think about the national animal symbols that we and some of our neighbors have adopted.

Contents

• Didus ineptus Linnaeus, by Roz Gibson
• A Poor Uncle’s Apprentice, by BanWynn Oakshadow
• Remembering the Forgotten, by H. J. Pang
• The Moon Like an Unhatched Egg, by Mary E. Lowd
• Crossroads the Namib, by Jako Malan
• Sdani White Wings, by Jennifer Sowle
• The Scent of Lantana, by Frances Pauli
• Huitaca, by Televassi
• To the Kingdom They Come, by H. J. Pang
• Bread and Butter, by Allison Thai
• The Lion of the Low Countries, by Alice “Huskyteer” Dryden

The book can be pre-ordered now from Goal Publications. It will be for sale at the Goal booth at Anthrocon, and on the Goal online catalogue after the convention. Price:  $17.50.  vii + 241 pages.  Print ISBN 978-0-99791-253-1, Digital ISBN 978-0-99791-254-8.   Wraparound cover by Jenn ‘Pac’ Rodriguez.

The digital copy will be available sometime after the convention.

– Fred Patten

In front of millions at San Francisco Pride 2015! (Thanks: Chrisastro.com)

Bay Area Furries are marching in the 2017 San Francisco Pride Parade on Sunday, June 25.  It’s one of the largest and most colorful events in San Francisco and will be on TV.  There have been better and better responses each time, and 70 or more are signed up.  Get ready for the best parade ever!  (See previous announcement about how to join, and the Meetup page for RSVP and discussion.)

Here’s what you need to know:

Pic by Vincent.

Marchers: Arrive at 100-150 Main Street. Be no earlier than 9:30am and no later than 11:40.

Volunteers: Arrive at 100-150 Main Street. Be no earlier than 9:30am and no later than 11.

To arrive from BART, exit at Embarcadero Station. Go up on the Main St. / Beale St. side.

Watchers: Be anywhere along the Market Street parade route, and the parade starts at 10:30.

Parade start: 12:30pm-1pm. (Last time we were in the parade, starting was delayed by hours due to being way more busy than they planned.  Do be patient, but don’t be late. The parade doesn’t wait for latecomers.)

FURSUITING: No bins!  Please bring soft foldable bags only.  Due to space, hard fursuit bins are NOT ALLOWED on the parade float. A backpack is OK for small personal items.  There’s no “lounge” so be ready to change on the street (many do for SF events.)

Groggy’s van will be parked for changing and limited storage at the Moscone Center garage, 255 3rd Street. This can help those who want to drive in, use hard bins, change off-street and start with a group.  Parking is $29.  That’s mid-way between both ends of the parade, a 15 minute walk in suit each way.  Groggy will be there until 10:30am.

To coordinate with Groggy: @GroggyFox on Telegram, or @Grogginator.

Be prepared to walk in the parade. Those who start on the float, stay on the float.  Space on the float will be limited so don’t depend on riding.  Priority goes to those with mobility, vision, hearing or other issues.  Consider outdoor footpaws or partialling.  This is not a casual hang-out, it’s a show that requires exertion.  Be ready to work it for the crowd!

Refreshments: Bottled Water and Sports Drinks.  Please bring your own snacks or extra water.

Parade length: around 45 minutes – 1 hour.  Dispersal is planned for around 2pm.  (It’s been unpredictable in the past so allow lots of time.) At the drop-off on 8th Street, bags and personal items on the float will be handed back to you.  Groggy may retrieve his van and meet you, but be prepared to possibly walk back.

If you want to attend the Celebration in Civic Center after the parade until 6PM, please check the website for map and details. (No bins inside the gates.)

Pic by Vincent

Route map:  Check this handy map for all the places discussed above.

Crash space is available at Relay’s Den Saturday night and Sunday morning. You can leave stuff there. It’s near 17th and Dolores, a 10 minute walk from 16th BART.  Take BART or Uber to the assembly area around 11am. Members will meet back there about 90 minutes after the parade ends. Dinner is at Picaro on 16th afterwards (bring payment, it’s a reasonably priced Tapas place), probably around 5 or 6pm.  RSVP to @RelayRaccoon (Telegram).

See previous announcement to join, and the Meetup Event page for RSVP and discussion.

Paypal donations are still being collected by Zoren: [email protected].

Conduct: San Francisco gets furries. Pride was born out of protest and some will let their freak flag fly. In rare cases we may discuss being on the side away from cameras, but we’re tame compared to others.  Organizers reserve the right to deny participation to anyone for any reason (it’s never happened, don’t test it).  Contact to ask about preparing your costume or more. The only rule is: Be nice.

Also be safe. Weird people from in AND out of the community are at large urban events and there have been incidents like fursuit thefts out of cars. Play it smart and buddy up. Riding BART in fursuit can be intense with crowds, but they love it just like crowds on the street love fursuit photos.

Contacts: (Check info before using, everyone is super busy!) Roman’s Twitter is @RomanOtter (same on Telegram and most things), Zoren has Twitter or Gmail or @ZorenManray on Telegram, or try Patch on Twitter or Gmail.

Now you’re ready to go. Tell your friends! This will be the best event ever, and be sure to bring those outdoor walking paws!

UPDATE: DJ Neonbunny sent a tip. You can coordinate for this in person at the parade: “After the parade, i’m djing a pride after party at the new parish in oakland and can get any fursuiters on the guest list, also a private room for any fursuiters. It’s a pretty fun indoor/outdoor dance party.”

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

The Art of Cars 3. Foreword by John Lasseter. Preface by Brian Fee.
Introduction by Bill Cone and Jay Shuster.
San Francisco, CA, Chronicle Books, May 2017, hardcover $40.00 (167 [+ 1] pages), Kindle $16.19.

This is the official de luxe coffee-table art book of the Disney•Pixar animated film Cars 3, released on June 16, 2017. It presents sample storyboards, pastels, digital paintings, preliminary character designs, computer models, and more, usually in full color; plus research photographs of the actual racing cars and the Daytona Speedway that were a main inspiration for the 99-minute feature film.

It has been acknowledged that these “art of” books featuring animated films are money-losers, subsidized by the advertising budgets for those films, made for the promotion of those films and for the morale of the artists and technical crews that produced them. The Art of Cars 3 is full of the art of the animators, layout artists, production designers, story artists, digital renderers, graphic designers, modelers, and others who created Cars 3. As usual for these “art of” books, each piece of art is identified by its artist: Paul Abadilla, Grant Alexander, Bert Berry, Bill Cone, Craig Foster, Louis Gonzales, John Hoffman, Josh Holtsclaw, Katherine Kelly, Noah Klocek, Ivo Kos, Kyle MacNaughton, Scott Morse, George Nguyen, Bob Pauley, Laura Phillips, Jerome Ranft, Xavier Riffault, Tony Rosenast, Andrew Schmidt, Jay Shuster, Garret Taylor, J. P. Vine, and others.

In addition, there are quotes from these artists. “The film opens with an exuberant burst of racing, reintroducing McQueen at the top of his game. The goal was to immerse the audience in the excitement of racing and show the camaraderie between racers. It can be bewildering to know how to begin, but having a temporary piece of music helps set the tempo. Then I’ll thumbnail, usually discarding tons of shots until it starts to flow and build in the right way.” –JP Vine, story artist. (p. 25)

The movie Cars 3 could not have existed without Cars (2006) and Cars 2 (2011). Those (and the two Planes animated movies) established the world of anthropomorphic vehicles, especially the champion racing car Lightning McQueen.

“Planned obsolescence. I grew up hearing those words frequently. Uttered by folks irate because their car was falling apart – the phrase was a catchall to express and shake a fist at the mythic (or is it?) conspiracy manufacturers employed to sell a new model annually. Centric to the story of Cars 3 is a theme of unplanned obsolescence. That is to say McQueen didn’t see it coming – until the day a sleek new breed of Piston Cup racer arrived at the track and ate McQueen’s lunch.” –Jay Shuster, Production Designer (p. 13)

The Art of Cars 3 does not give a real plot synopsis of the movie. Instead it presents the protagonist Lightning McQueen, the only major character returning from the two previous movies, a champion racing car but now ten years old. The other characters are the new cast: Natalie Certain, the female auto and romantic interest; Storm Front, McQueen’s newer and more improved rival; all the other Next-Gen racers; Sterling Dunn, sports car and McQueen’s fan and trainer; Cruz, the impish young “kid sister” racer who helps McQueen train (this book’s cover shows McQueen and Cruz training together on the beach); Miss Fritter, the comedy-relief souped-up school bus; the elderly 1950s cars who were Doc Hudson’s contemporaries. Also shown are the locales: the (real) Daytona Speedway; the (fictional) Rust-Eze Racing Center; the abandoned (fictional) town that Doc Hudson, McQueen’s mentor, grew up and trained in. For the real fans of Cars 3, there are a couple of pages of visual outtakes; reference art and conceptual drawings that didn’t get used for the movie.

The three Cars animated movies present anthropomorphic automobiles. Maybe this isn’t what most “furry fans” want, but it is anthro art & fiction. If you like the Cars movies – if living racing cars turn you on – go for it!

–Fred Patten

• Buy on Amazon

Thanks to Lamar for submitting. His articles on Flayrah include this recommended one: “Furry, not an obscure little fandom any more” – it’s as relevant today as in 2011.

A couple of weeks ago I put out a call via Twitter, helpfully reposted by some high profile people, to see if I could get any first hand reports of how Convention and Security staff handled issues at Conventions.

I had exactly three replies in total. One saying that they had once reported someone vaping inside the convention space. One security staffer who was unable to discuss any details but expressed that incidents of harassment do happen, and have to be handled correctly and with care. And finally, another con staffer who accused me of being on a “fishing expedition” and using rumours to ascribe bad faith.

And outside of twitter I talked to a young member of the fandom, who continues to receive targeted convention related harassment. I’m going to call him Adrian, but that’s not his real name. Adrian shared copies of the messages. They include slurs and rants, including for instance “You ATTENTION seeking c***”. Adrian received this harassment, for speaking out about what happened to him at a convention some years ago. I ask him to talk about it.

It started when he complimented someone on their fursuit at a convention.
Then some drinks.
And an invite to a hotel room to party.
And then being pressured into non-consenting sex.
Or to use the correct word, rape.

The next morning, Adrian had to leave the convention. Maybe if he’d stayed, he’d have gathered the courage to report it. But instead Adrian tried to put it behind him, after all surely it was just a mistake.

“I didn’t tell the staff because I thought the guy cared about me,” Adrian tells me, “Then after the con ended he told me that I needed to get [psychiatric] help because being trans is wrong.”

It wasn’t till later, when Adrian felt able to talk about what had happened. And that’s when Adrian started getting defensive messages, recounting a different version of events from those Adrian remembered.

Which quickly escalated to harassment from multiple people, all aimed at trying to keep Adrian quiet. “One of their friends contacted me and harassed me, I blocked their account and they went onto a fake one to continue harassing me.”

Adrian is a victim of the circle of silence that I fear has set in to the fandom. There seems to be a great amount of social pressure on not ‘creating drama’.  What little is seen is in rumours passed around social media, and the occasional flare up when administrative action is taken against someone who made an accusation on a furry site.  It would be incredibly naive to think that there’s such a small amount of harassment to warrant not having anyone willing to go on the record with me about it. Even if I hadn’t known of Adrian’s story, or multiples like it. I am deeply concerned that the Furry Fandom has developed a toxic culture where we don’t talk about harassment, because it might make the fandom look bad.

– Lamar

Notes from Patch: 

Speaking of inaction, Lamar let me see a concept that has some attention in fandoms, the Missing Stair.

Here’s a story about BLFC 2017. It started when the below complaint got traffic on Furry Twitter and Telegram:

This is not the track record you want your convention to have, I hope. pic.twitter.com/8hVhkrRSxd

— tesco value burger (@JUNIUS_64) June 2, 2017

There was no ID but the talk led me to notice that guy in the hall, so I got the badge name that was being sought. A little while later he was wandering a public area and going slightly over the line of physical respect by smacking stranger’s butts with a ball, so security kicked him out of the room and I got video. A tip connected all that to the original complaint.

I have no idea how they handled it from there. That’s something they keep private for good reasons, I think. The guy seemed chastened by being kicked out and I would rather not do shaming by sharing video without a compelling reason (which would likely only come from people directly involved).  I’m not the police or con security, and I saw evidence of someone lacking friends or social skills. Basically, a lonely guy who wasn’t much of a threat, making its own punishment in a small way. (Same for Furry Raiders who were hiding like losers with a little gaggle of “bodyguards” to go anywhere.)

The original discussion on Twitter caused action to connect the ID and a record in case complaints repeat. I would take that as a pretty good result and a little positive sign about the goodness of the community. Be like that.

Here’s the alt-furries other side: “don’t just do something, sit there!” For the real fandom: if you see anyone acting like Adrian’s harassers, don’t let it go.

Experiences or opinions? Please comment.

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

Léonid. T. 2, La Horde, by Frédéric Brrémaud & Stefano Turconi.
Toulon, France, Soleil, May 2016, hardcover €10,95 (48 pages).

My thanks to Lex Nakashima, as usual for this French bande dessinée album.

Brrémaud is the author-artist of those French wordless “Love” animal albums that many fans collect, but in this case he is only the author. Turconi is the artist.

To repeat what I said about the first album, “The locale is the farming district of Deux-Sèvres, in central-west France. ‘Léonid is a cat, not yet an adult, but not a kitten, either. Just a young cat. He lives in a house in the district, in the midst of trees, pretty far from any city and close to a farm.’ Léonid is a young housecat, living with two other housecats (Hoa Mai, a Siamese, and Rosso, an elderly orange Pekinese) and a dog (Mirza, a toy terrier). His household is also the home of Atchi, a mouse constantly sneezing because he’s allergic to cat hairs. Léonid is allowed outside during the daytime to associate and play with the local feral cats; the female black-&-white Ba’on, and the males Bouboule (the fat one), Arsène (the nervous one), and an anonymous one (because he’s almost immediately killed). […] The Two Albinos is mostly the story of how Ba’on is kidnapped by the two albinos to be their slave, and how Léonid and Atchi, the sneezing mouse, venture outside to her rescue. They’re successful, but not really because Ba’on reveals that while she was in the albino cats’ power, they boasted that they are just the vanguard of ‘the horde’, ‘the avant-garde of the terror of Great Attila, our guide’ who will kill or enslave all the animals of the district.   Léonid, Ba’on, Aichi, Hoa Mai, Rosso, and Mirza are left wondering what to do when Attila and his horde arrive?”

In t.2, the Horde arrives. The animals in Léonid’s house – three housecats, Mirza the toy terrier, and Atchi the mouse are enjoying their daily life. Old Rosso, who is suffering erratic memory loss, sleeps most of the time. Young Léonid goes out each day to associate with the local feral cats, Bouboule, Arsène, and especially the female Ba’on. They are under the dubious protection of Zeus and Apollo, the farmer’s two large, fierce guard dogs who watch over his small flock of sheep. Before the coming of the Horde’s bloody outliers, Zeus and Apollo would tear apart any cat they could catch; but after the animals’ adventures together against the Horde’s scouts led by the two sadistic albino cats, the neighborhood pets and the guard dogs have made common cause against Attila’s coming Horde.

The action begins when a family of cats – two parents and two young kittens – comes tearing into their neighborhood, barely ahead of the Horde. Zeus and Apollo are barely dissuaded from attacking them, and Léonid and the neighborhood cats put them up in the farmer’s barn when the Horde arrives, led by the two albino cats. They will kill any other cats, but they are especially looking for Ba’on and Léonid who escaped them earlier.

Léonid has to get back and forth from the barn to his house to organize a defense. It’s too risky to go above ground, so Atchi shows them some tunnels that friendly moles have dug. It helps, but it’s not enough. The solution is provided by the cat who seems to be the weakest.

T.2 has such a happy ending that I am not sure whether this has been only a two-album series or not. The subtitle is “The Adventures of a Cat”, so if it is to continue, Brrémaud & Turconi will have to move on to a new adventure. That should be easy; Léonid is an adventurous young cat.

Léonid is an enjoyable light adventure series, in easy French for the fan who isn’t fluent in it.

–Fred Patten

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