Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Month: August, 2015

President Obama’s fur meet – The “Celebrifurry” List, PART 1: Politicians and VIP’s.

by Patch O'Furr

Mr. President, why are they so sexy?Obama hangs out with furries!  The proof is below.  Mr. President, why are they so sexy? 

This tiny subculture has more influence than many members even realize.  The topic grew from a furry influence article that drew extra high traffic: (Mainstream advertising: “More and more, Furries are being hinted at in marketing media.”)  Advertisers covet “street cred”, and subcultures have it.  Even tiny notices show a subculture on the rise.

Now, many people want to know:  Are there any secret furry celebrities?  Who likes furries in the mainstream?  Here’s a Buzzfeed-esque topic that will fluff your fur, or raise your hackles!

  • PART 1) – Politicians and VIP’s.  
  • PART 2) – Actors, comedians, and media personalities.
  • PART 3) – Musicians.

This is a non-fandom list.  And OK, “celebrifurry” is exaggerating.  Almost none have “come out of the kennel” as BEING furry.  Keep low expectations.  This is “15 seconds of fame” encounters, coincidences, and near-rumors.  Celebrity confessions of cartoon crushes can make the list (because getting hot for Robin Hood is a Thing.)  The list also has some animal costuming that hints about association.  But let’s avoid lazy exploitation (like talk shows or Howard Stern), because they’d exploit any group with little recognition beyond stereotypes – and you’ve seen all that hype before.  Many of these items are overlooked or ambiguous, so it makes a short, incomplete list.  This is as good as it gets so far… but wait until there’s a fursuit political campaign.

Politicians and VIP’s

Read the rest of this entry »

Twisted by Miranda Leek – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

(Note from Patch: Thanks to poppa bookworm for formatting. Fred’s review was held for a while, because the author didn’t feel comfortable about criticism in it. There was opportunity to revise the book itself, but that didn’t happen for months, so now we’re putting it out anyways.  Honestly, I think the book concept sounds really fun and imaginative, which can be highly entertaining even combined with horrible execution. Think: Troma movies.  I’d pick this up before many mainstream books!)

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

Twisted, by Miranda Leek. [2nd edition.] Illustrated by the author.Twisted 2nd edition
Bloomington, IN, AuthorHouse, July 2014, trade paperback $26.95 (533 pages), Kindle $3.99.

This novel does not acknowledge that it is a second edition, but if you look at its Amazon.com entry, the first edition, May 2010, is still for sale right under it. The first edition is 376 pages, this is 533 pages, so it has at least been expanded. The first edition identifies the author as 17 years old; by the second, she is 22. Hopefully the four-year difference also includes an improvement in the writing, because the writing is still pretty bad.

The concept is certainly unique, as far as I know: anthropomorphic amusement park rides! The hero is Railrunner, a red roller coaster. The villain is Ironwheel, a black roller coaster. The setting is “Amusement Park Between”, a dimension consisting only of a vast world inhabited solely of living amusement park rides. The narrator is Rodney Philips, a young man whose previous employer has gone out of business and who is desperate for any kind of new job. He answers a newspaper advertisement for Mystic Park’s new roller coaster engineer, and learns that he is perfect for the job — in fact, he is a were-roller coaster!

Twisted introduces more than anthropomorphic roller coasters, particularly when it moves into “Part Two: The Land of Wonder and War”; the world of Amusement Park Between. There are Merrylegs, a gaudy carousel unicorn; Static, a blue-&-green dodgem car; Moonhoof, another carousel horse; Angeltrack, Railrunner’s mother (yes, Railrunner is freaked out at realizing that he was born as a baby roller coaster by a roller coaster mother); Freakshow, Ironwheel’s roller coaster general; Havoctrack, a salty roller coaster sea captain; Spiderleg, an eight-hydraulic-armed spider ride; a nameless go-kart, and many others. There is the whole world, which is much more than just an endless amusement park:

“I poured myself another round of wine. ‘What is that?’ I queried.

‘Where all red roller coasters have called home: the sacred Temple of the Red. There is where Thunderbark will train you, and that, Railrunner, is where you will fully discover all of what you are. The Temple is about a two-day journey from here. It lies beneath the surface of the great Achterbahn River, within the island of Quinet, past the town of Trenzon. The temple is an amazing thing, made entirely of gold, a castle fit for a king and his nobles.” (p. 155)

Er – I’m having a hard time visualizing a solid-gold castle-temple beneath a river. In fact …

Twisted is one of those rare novels that you can nitpick to pieces all day, and it still remains surprisingly readable. Read the rest of this entry »

Kairos: Tome 3 by Ulysse Malassagne – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

Kairos T 3 book coverKairos. Tome 3, by Ulysse Malassagne.
Roubaix, France, Ankama Éditions, January 2015, hardcover €11.90 (64 pages), Kindle $7.99.

Thanks once more to Lex Nakashima for getting this from Amazon.fr and sharing it with me. This is in French, but it’s mostly cartoon artwork. Since there’s no sign of an English-language edition, here is the French original.

And so the saga is over.

To recap, Niils loves the mysterious Anaëlle. During a camping trip in the French countryside, she is kidnapped by dragon knights and taken through a dimensional portal. Niils follows them into the anthropomorphic dragons’ world. In t.2, it turns out that Anaëlle is the dragon kingdom’s princess; she escaped into our human world and took on a human form to escape a forced marriage to her own father; she was tracked down and seized by the dragon knights to fulfill her destiny; Niils goes after her and finds that the dragon commoners are ready to revolt against their royal family; and he leads a revolution even while he is turning into a dragon himself. Read the rest of this entry »

Praise from Cracked, Mattress company winks at us, nazi teddybears – NEWSDUMP (8/13/15)

by Patch O'Furr

Tips: patch.ofurr@gmail.com

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.  Guest posts welcome. “Local correspondents” wanted to talk about your local networks. 

projectq-pride-parade-cp-180__largeCORRECTION: Fangcon was NOT the first con to sponsor a float in a Pride parade – FWA was earlier.

Tip from Slickkat: “FWA has had a float in the Atlanta Pride parade for the last two years.” It corrects this week’s headline calling Fangcon the first. Queer media outlet Project Q wrote about the FWA sponsorship:  Furries cuddle up and show their Atlanta Pride. The active Georgiafurs site organizes the Pride float since 2013.

Florida Times-Union: Meet the Furries.

Nothing new here, but nicely written.

Guess who’s #5 on the CRACKED list of “6 Groups Who Shouldn’t Be Sexual Punchlines.” 

This article gets a Hallelujah.  It has comedy and sexy furries, but they aren’t the target.  Instead, it makes fun of judgemental assholes.  That’s refreshing, after a tendency for media to be sadistic to innocent people, who happen to have richer than usual fantasy lives.

Read the rest of this entry »

Subject 9 – Furry comic guest review by Vox Fox.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Vox Fox, a talent in music, fursuiting and video in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Read the rest of this entry »

Silicon Valley Pride invites furs – Fangcon makes history with Pride parade sponsorship.

by Patch O'Furr

“Furry Pride” is redundant when you’re a talking animal.  There’s no way you can’t strut your stuff, turn heads and light up a crowd with smiles.  But when furries AT Pride join other groups with a bigger mission, it puts the magic where it most belongs – in a fabulous show – and makes a good cause better.

Furries invited for August 30, 2015:

logo_smart1_transp

Tip from Neonbunny, builder of influential events like Frolic:

“Silicon Valley Pride has reached out to me as they would love to have fursuiters at the pride festival, August 30th.  They will have a changing tent available, and can offer free admission for suiters that RSVP in advance.

The other person who they reached out to, who’s coordinating things right now, is Lani B.  She’s pretty active in the South Bay cosplay scene, and they’ve reached out to her to get cosplayers to go as well. (Anime/comic type costuming stuff).  Her email is dynamiccosplaycouple@gmail.com and she’s on facebook here.

This is the link for the pride event, and Lani has also created a facebook page to get cosplayers motivated to go (and hopefully fursuiters as well.) If anyone is interested in coordinating fursuiters for this, please get in touch!” – NeonBunny

The San Francisco Pride parade may be the premiere event for LGBT culture.  It’s popular among the SF Bay Area Furries, so in 2015, their show-stealing presence in front of a million viewers made a standout event for the whole furry subculture. But it was far from the only one.  (Expect a chat soon with Uncle Kage, about Anthrocon’s awesome accomplishments in 2015.)  In fact, theirs wasn’t even the only Furry statement at Pride events around the world.  Competition came from an unexpected place – Knoxville, Tennessee. Read the rest of this entry »

The Vimana Incident, by Rose LaCroix – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

The Vimana Incident, by Rose LaCroix.the_vimana_incident_by_nightphaser-d89nndt
Dallas, TX, FuPlanet Productions, February 2015, trade paperback $9.95 (205 pages), epub $7.95.

This title is a work of anthropomorphic fiction for adult readers only.

Rose LaCroix is proud to present her most anticipated novel, where psychedelic science fiction, historical fiction, and alternate timelines come together in a suspenseful, mind-bending masterpiece.” (back-cover blurb) Well, it’s certainly her most ambitious novel.

Edward “Red Ned” Arrowsmith is a red fox British aerospace engineer in an anthropomorphic 1939, where the world is not preparing for World War II but is engaged in a race to establish the first permanent Lunar colony. Ned is the chief engineer at Bristol Lunar, the firm that supplies the hardware for the British space program. A manned Lunar landing has already been accomplished; now the race is on to build a permanent base. The Americans, the British, the Germans, the Japanese, and the Soviets are all in peacetime competition, but they don’t pretend that it’s friendly.

One day the commander of the Royal Air Force Lunar Expeditionary Force pays a surprise visit to Red Ned’s office. He’s needed to go on a secret mission to the moon. Does he accept? Ned guesses so, but when? Right now – the commander (an otter in a RAF officer’s uniform) will drive Ned to the dirigible airfield to get a flight to the launch site immediately. “‘We’ll have time to stop by your house so you can bring a change of clothes but we have to be on the RAS Empress of India by no later than four o’clock pip-emma. That is, if you choose to accept this mission.’” (p. 15)

I suppose that if you can accept talking anthropomorphized animals, a secret mission where one is called upon to become a member of a Lunar mission at a moment’s notice with no training is no problem. But it fatally weakened any aura of believability for me. After that, The Vimana Incident became for me just a fast-moving amateur secret-agent/science-fiction adventure with a funny-animal cast. Until about halfway through, where it becomes very much more than that … Read the rest of this entry »

Five juvenile novelizations of anthro animated features – book reviews by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

Minions CoverMinions: The Deluxe Junior Novel, Adapted by Sadie Chesterfield, Based on the Motion Picture Screenplay Written by Brian Lynch. Illustrated.
NYC, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, May 2015, hardcover $9.99 (131 pages), paperback $6.99.

Paddington: The Junior Novel, Adapted by Jeanne Willis, Based on the screenplay written by Paul King, Based on the Paddington Bear novels written and created by Michael Bond. Illustrated.
NYC, HarperCollinsBooks/HarperFestival, October 2014, trade paperback $5.99 (142 pages, Kindle $5.99.

Penguins of Madagascar: Movie Novelization, adapted by Tracey West. Illustrated.
NYC, Simon and Schuster/Simon Spotlight, October 2014, trade paperback $6.99 (142 pages), Kindle $6.49.

Planes: Fire & Rescue: The Junior Novelization, Adapted by Suzanne Francis. Illustrated.
NYC, Random House, June 2014, trade paperback $5.99 (122 pages).

Rio 2: The Junior Novel, Adapted by Christa Roberts. Illustrated.
NYC, HarperCollinsBooks/HarperFestival, February 2014, hardcover $14.40 (144 pages), trade PB $5.99, Kindle $5.99.

None of these juvenile novelizations would be worth reviewing alone, but they make a point for furry fandom: for about the last five years, there have been practically no anthropomorphic theatrical animated features, and a lot of animated features starring mostly real or fantasy humans like Pixar’s Brave and Inside Out, from major animation studios that have not had authorized juvenile novelizations of about 140 pages. (If it’s from Simon Spotlight, you can count on it having exactly 144 pages; a tipoff that all of its juvenile novelizations are written to a formula. But, in the case of Minions, those 144 pages include 131 pages of novel, plus 13 pages of color plates, black-&-white illustrations, and advertising.) Many VFX-heavy live-action features like Avengers: Age of Ultron and Guardians of the Galaxy and Tomorrowland have novelizations, too. I could have picked Blue Sky Studios’ Ice Age: Continental Drift or Epic; Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph or Tangled or Frozen or Big Hero 6; DreamWorks Animation’s Turbo or Mr. Peabody and Sherman or Home (despite Home being already based on a “real” book, Adam Rex’s The True Meaning of Smekday); LAIKA’s ParaNorman or The Boxtrolls; Sony Pictures Animation’s Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs or Hotel Transylvania 2; Warner Animation Group’s The Lego Movie (144 pages from Scholastic, Inc.) – almost any animated feature. Read the rest of this entry »

Doc Rat Vol. 13 and 14, by Jenner – Book Reviews by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

Doc Rat. Vol. 13, Lucky for Some, Doc, by Jenner.
Melbourne, Vic., Australia, Platinum Rat Productions, June 2014, trade paperback A$16.00 (unpaged [76 pages]).

Doc Rat. Vol. 14, Prey Tell, Doc: Son of Fortenflanck, by Jenner.
Melbourne, Vic., Australia, Platinum Rat Productions, December 2014, trade paperback A$16.00 (unpaged [88 pages]).

Vol-13-cover-front-proof-Small-450x316These are the latest two pocket-sized volumes of Jenner’s Doc Rat online daily comic strip. They are especially desirable right now when the Doc Rat website is having electronic problems, so you couldn’t read these strips for free on its archive if you wanted to. But even when the archive comes back online, these thin booklets are extremely handy for carrying around with you. They are only available in one bookshop in Melbourne, and by mail order over the strip’s website for A$16.00 or US$12.95 each. They are highly recommended.

It’s no secret today that Jenner is Dr. Craig Hilton, a general practitioner in a suburb of Melbourne. Dr. Benjamin Rat M.B., many etc.’s, is also a GP in a suburb of the Australian animal city of Fornor. Jenner began Doc Rat in June 2006, and like any long-running comic strip, it has a wealth of backstory and supporting characters by now. It helps if you are familiar with them, but it’s not essential; just as it isn’t essential to be familiar with the medical profession to appreciate all the technical references that Doc Rat and his staff plus others (Gizelle Thomson, his Thomson’s gazelle office receptionist; Mary Scamper, his motherly rabbit nurse; and numerous pharmaceutical high-pressure salesmen) casually throw around. Doc Rat has his own GP practice, and most of the situations that he faces are shared by any small business: billing, paperwork, keeping up with the latest developments in your specialty, and so on.

Read the rest of this entry »

Trick or Treat, Volume 2: Historical Halloween – Book Review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

(I considered holding this for October – but Fred reminded me that Trick or Treat Volume 3: Pranks, Parties, and Pumpkins will be out – so enjoy it now!) – Patch

trick-or-treat-volume-two-historical-halloween-edited-by-ianus-j-67211Trick or Treat, volume 2: Historical Halloween, edited by Ianus J. Wolf.
Las Vegas, NV, Rabbit Valley Books, October 2014, trade paperback $20.00 (373 pages).

This is Rabbit Valley’s second annual (2014) Halloween theme anthology; “something for the adults to enjoy”, as last year’s volume said. It presents ten new stories; six scary horror “tricks” and four “delectable romantic and erotic” treats. The book’s fine wraparound cover is again by Stephanie “Ifus” Johnson.

Wolf points out in his Introduction that “historical” is treated liberally. “It is also worth noting that much of the original history of Halloween and its roots of Samhain that we ‘know’ are actually still debated in most academic circles.” (I can personally attest to its evolution. When I went to school in the late 1940 and early ‘50s, you were ‘wrong’ if you spelled Hallowe’en without the apostrophe between the two e’s. Today, nobody bothers with it.) “So relax, have some fun, and don’t think too much of this as a history lesson.” (p. 2)

The anthology is again divided into two parts, each presented by one of the anthropomorphic hosts. Trick the wolf gives us six scary “tricks”, and Treat the black cat follows with four erotic “treats”.

“Jenny-Burnt-Tail” by Huskyteer is set in the British trenches during World War I. A Scottish (terrier) trooper carves a turnip into a jack-o-lantern on All Hallows Eve, and Captain fox tells his men a seasonal reminiscence from his childhood. This story isn’t as scary in itself as the way that Huskyteer tells it, with convincing 1915 British accents and slang. The mud and mist and cold and wet, with enemy snipers all around and maybe poison gas – you really feel that you’re there; never mind any spooks that may also be there. It’s educational, too; you’ll learn a half-dozen regional names for will-o’-the-wisps (including Jenny-Burnt-Tail, which is genuine despite sounding like it was created for this anthropomorphic world). A superb mood piece. Read the rest of this entry »