It stirred a lot of familiarity... since I'm sort of part of that local community including people like Carol Queen of the Center for Sex and Culture, who maintains a library of zines including early Furry comics.
I found Furry through some very tenuous web contact (an email list or two) in those mid 90's times, but more strongly through zines. It was only one of a bunch of topics I got into, punk rock and tape/video trading were others. I had a pen pal network and even published a bit. Factsheet Five was the bible where all zines were submitted for review and they took a strong radical stance of passing on all info they received, which included much worse stuff than the kind that can disturb you here (they got in some shit for refusing to block nambla from their info page.)
As soon as I saw mention of Black Sheets I thought, dang I would like to see the specific page... I already searched it, and then there it was at bottom of post. Thanks.
Just for context here is a 2015 catalog (PDF) of that era's zines from Bolerium Books, a world respected specialist in very niche radical publications. (I believe John Waters is a devoted patron.) http://www.bolerium.com/zines2015.pdf
Notice how wildly special interest it all gets... this was mostly pre web and so it passed direct person to person in the mail, dozens or maybe a few hundred personally stapled together copies at best, no filter whatsoever.
The entire culture of these mail zines was radical self expression and anti censorship. I'm familiar with many free speech issues that bubbled out of it. Some of the addresses (the eye popping ones) posted next to the CF address included: a dude who went on Jerry Springer and published one of the few (or only) books on the "zoo" topic through a radical but respected NY publisher - and someone who I believe is still running a toy company with a devoted customer base.
In short what you see there is NOT in any way the responsibility of any supposed Furry leader. And it's included in the spirit of radical speech, not because the topics are tied in any way besides the interest of the submitter, representing their self alone.
You can say the internet broke this culture wide open to everyone, but it also exposed it all to the panopticon and impersonal mass conformity. In a way, zines were the most pure lab for subcultures.
Fred Patten's articles about early fan publishing did a good service by sharing some of the furry ones... I think it's a mostly forgotten milieu. And yeah anyone who claims sex didn't fertilize this is nuts. It was only one of other entry points but it was a strong one at the roots going back to the 1960's underground comix days.
This is a hell of a post!
It stirred a lot of familiarity... since I'm sort of part of that local community including people like Carol Queen of the Center for Sex and Culture, who maintains a library of zines including early Furry comics.
I found Furry through some very tenuous web contact (an email list or two) in those mid 90's times, but more strongly through zines. It was only one of a bunch of topics I got into, punk rock and tape/video trading were others. I had a pen pal network and even published a bit. Factsheet Five was the bible where all zines were submitted for review and they took a strong radical stance of passing on all info they received, which included much worse stuff than the kind that can disturb you here (they got in some shit for refusing to block nambla from their info page.)
As soon as I saw mention of Black Sheets I thought, dang I would like to see the specific page... I already searched it, and then there it was at bottom of post. Thanks.
Just for context here is a 2015 catalog (PDF) of that era's zines from Bolerium Books, a world respected specialist in very niche radical publications. (I believe John Waters is a devoted patron.) http://www.bolerium.com/zines2015.pdf
Notice how wildly special interest it all gets... this was mostly pre web and so it passed direct person to person in the mail, dozens or maybe a few hundred personally stapled together copies at best, no filter whatsoever.
The entire culture of these mail zines was radical self expression and anti censorship. I'm familiar with many free speech issues that bubbled out of it. Some of the addresses (the eye popping ones) posted next to the CF address included: a dude who went on Jerry Springer and published one of the few (or only) books on the "zoo" topic through a radical but respected NY publisher - and someone who I believe is still running a toy company with a devoted customer base.
In short what you see there is NOT in any way the responsibility of any supposed Furry leader. And it's included in the spirit of radical speech, not because the topics are tied in any way besides the interest of the submitter, representing their self alone.
You can say the internet broke this culture wide open to everyone, but it also exposed it all to the panopticon and impersonal mass conformity. In a way, zines were the most pure lab for subcultures.
Fred Patten's articles about early fan publishing did a good service by sharing some of the furry ones... I think it's a mostly forgotten milieu. And yeah anyone who claims sex didn't fertilize this is nuts. It was only one of other entry points but it was a strong one at the roots going back to the 1960's underground comix days.