There aren't too many anthropomorphic computer adventure games out there, so I thought I'd review Jolly Rover, a swashbuckling scenario by an Australian company called Brawsome (aka Andrew Goulding). This game is aimed at the casual market, so it's pretty easy-going, taking about 5-8 hours. It's available for less than $9 for PC, Mac, and on Steam. (Watch the trailer.)
The story is populated by anthropomorphic dogs, and the protagonist is Gaius James Rover, a dachshund who dreams of eventually starting his own circus. Hoping to earn money towards this project, he invests his life savings in a cargo delivery of rum - which goes horribly wrong, thanks to a corrupt governor and a band of mercenary pirates. His only hope of financial salvation lies in joining the pirates and locating a long-lost treasure before they do.
It starts light-heartedly enough. Take your basic haunted house story, only do it with dogs investigating a haunted doghouse. And slowly, gradually, the stories get darker.
Burden Hill would appear to be your everyday, quiet suburb, except... things... are starting to happen, and while the local humans haven't noticed anything yet, the local dogs certainly have.
Beasts of Burden is basically a series of comic books about canine paranormal investigation. (Plus a couple of cats.) The writing by Evan Dorkin manages to be fun and ominous at the same time, and he gives the dogs distinct personalities in a way that feels very believable. The artwork by Jill Thompson is rendered in excellent watercolors, and generates just the right atmosphere.
The Wolf Children Ame and Yuki (trailer 1 - 2) is a 2012 anime film directed by Mamoru Hosoda. Unlike his 2009 Summer Wars, this movie is very slow, introspective, and somewhat tragic. It might appeal to a small subset of furries, but its furry elements are underplayed and it may not have enough animal content to hook us as viewers.
Talking about this movie without spoiling it impossible because the story has no complexity. Basically, a single mom moves to the country and struggles to raise two werewolf kids; one embraces their wolf heritage, the other rejects it, and the family moves apart. That's it. (See Wikipedia for a more complete summary.)
Fred introduces each story to put them into context, and the book's font is large and easy to read. The layout, however, could have benefited from having the authors and story titles printed along the tops of the pages. Without them, it's much harder to pick up where you left off, without using a bookmark.
The stories can be divided into two distinct time periods. Six were written between 1942-1962 (the tail end of SF's golden age); the rest are from 1991-2006. I was surprised that there was nothing from SF's new wave/experimental period in the 60s and 70s.
The Ursa Major Awards have been running since 2001, and one of the more difficult categories to vote in has been "Best Anthropomorphic Short Fiction", due to the works being scattered across various fanzines, magazines, con books and web pages. So I'm very glad that Fred Patten has edited together The Ursa Major Awards anthology: a tenth anniversary celebration, published by FurPlanet (2012), allowing us to read eleven stories from across the fandom collected under one cover. (341 p., ISBN 9781614500520)
The original idea was to print the winning short story from each year of the Awards, but because Kyell Gold has won the popular vote consecutively from 2006 to 2011, this felt a little unbalanced towards the other contributors, so only three of his works appear here. (It skips In between from 2008 and Bridges from 2010.)
To pad out the book a little more, three Ursa-nominated stories were also included. Most of the works are about 20-30 pages in length, with occasional illustrations from artists such as Synnabar, John Cooner and Vicki Wyman. The gentle, moonlit cover art was done by Blotch.
Save the Day by D.J. Fahl is a 2010 novel published by FurPlanet; it's both a gay-coming-out story and a superhero drama. It's a decent read, although there's room for improvement.
The novel is set in contemporary America (Portland, mainly), except superheroes are a new phenomenon that have only appeared in the last 15 years or so. There are maybe a couple dozen people with extraordinary powers and advanced technology around the world, and the world is still learning to deal with them, from the social to the political to the legal side of things – like launching a class-action suit against the estate of a supervillain for damages.
Part of my fate in the fandom seems to involve finding bad foreign animated films. Granted, most folks in the fandom couldn't be bothered to know about them anyway, but if I can stop even a handful of people from wasting their time, that's a good thing.
As an alternative to the Ursa Major Awards, the Furry Writers' Guild (FWG) recently set up the Cóyotl Awards to promote quality writing within furry fandom. Unlike the Ursas, which have open nominations and a rank-based voting system, the Cóyotl Awards are using a more complex scoring structure based on plot, character, setting and literary merit.
Both general and mature works are eligible for nomination, but you can't nominate work you are directly involved with (as specified in the rules). Nominations are to close after April 15.
Nominating and voting is limited to people in the Guild, whose membership requires having stories previously published by other people (i.e., submitted to and accepted by the editor of an online or print publication; not posted to your Fur Affinity or SoFurry page).
While we're waiting to see how furry fandom is treated by Fanboy Confessional, now might be a good time to discuss a documentary that presents another fandom with respect.
In 2007, a video of an animatronic animal band performing Bubba Sparxxx's Ms. New Booty went viral. Director Brett Whitcomb and writer Bradford Thomason followed the video back to its source, and in 2008 produced a 72-minute documentary about the band and its fans: The Rock-afire Explosion (trailer).
There aren't too many anthropomorphic computer adventure games out there, so I thought I'd review 
It starts light-heartedly enough. Take your basic haunted house story, only do it with dogs investigating a haunted doghouse. And slowly, gradually, the stories get darker.
Save the Day by 
Part of my fate in the fandom seems to involve finding bad foreign animated films. Granted, most folks in the fandom couldn't be bothered to know about them anyway, but if I can stop even a handful of people from wasting their time, that's a good thing.