Dogpatch Press

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.  Guest posts welcome. Tips: patch.ofurr@gmail.com. 

Halloween treats:  Popularity for Rocket Raccoon, and some looks at the culture of costuming.

Mom’s costume creation goes viral, ‘wins’ Halloween 2015.  A very lucky kid in Michigan got to be an accurately-diminutive Rocket Raccoon, complete with moving jaw.  It got shared on Facebook by the director of Guardians of The Galaxy.  This isn’t claimed to be overtly “furry”, but when Mom makes cosplay outfits for Comic Con… it makes you wonder what research helped to build it from scratch.

UPDATE: The maker confirmed to me that Furry tutorials helped build it. I asked her opinion of furries, and she says:

It’s some tough work everyone does and all of you should be proud. I made so many mistakes because there aren’t a lot of tutorials for doing stuff like this. I honestly didn’t know too much about furries until I was trying to research how to make a movable mouth for my son.

In Huntsville Alabama, inside the business of Fig Leaf Costumes: “it looks like a dressing room for furries in here.” Read between the lines, and the article might involve us, maybe indirectly. There’s this thoughtful tidbit:

So why does he still enjoy playing dress up at age 35? “I love how people react. If you dressed up as a character they love they come over and give you a hug. It’s just a good feeling,” says Harrison, who along with his girlfriend plans to dress up in a couples costume for Halloween this year: “Lady and The Tramp.” Burkholder thinks the trend of adults continuing to dress in costumes, for Halloween and otherwise, is due to “Gen X feels a little bit lost so what we’re doing is claiming a little bit of a community for ourselves, especially with cosplay. And also with modernity people move away from so they want to form a sense of community, so whether it’s videogames or cosplay it’s people coming together. And I like that.

“Milford Schools Criticized Nationally Over ‘Halloween Ban’.” A smaller city in Connecticut planned to stop costuming at some public schools.  That quickly changed after everyone growled about political correctness.  It reminds me of a similar-sized city in Vermont banning fursuiters.  Are they just too uptight in New England?  Are some people afraid of self-expression?

16 year sentence for McGruff the Crime Dog.

“The actor who played the crime-fighting cartoon character McGruff the Crime Dog, was sentenced to 16 years in prison stemming from a 2011 arrest in which police seized 1,000 marijuana plants, 27 weapons – including a grenade launcher – and 9,000 rounds of ammunition from his home…”

Dutch Furries get a little news notice.  

Furries conquer Dordrecht. (Rough translation…)

This week, life-sized stuffed animals met townsfolk and shared high fives and hugs in the center of the city.  The furries came from all over the Netherlands to see how Dordrecht would react to them.  It was so good that they intend to return more often.  Read more tomorrow about the people who are only too happy to dress up like cuddly toys for a laugh with others.

Zootopia: Disney’s new furriest movie ever already has it’s own modest fandom.

Reddit’s r/zootopia has low membership but decent activity.  @NookFox posted framegrabs from the trailer, saying: “in the furry fandom I belive this one is in the wrong sequence :P”.  I helped switch them around…

“Masculinity, Marines, and My Little Pony.”

The dissertation of a PhD candidate in Missouri takes on an unusual crossover. His website gives a little more insight to his research and the project.

I’ve been analyzing social media and observing presentations on Military Bronies at Brony conventions in an attempt to understand how they experience and negotiate their fandom within the military…Male Military Bronies at times suffer from the kind of stigma and bullying reserved for feminine men and, because they are also often assumed to be gay, homophobia.

Facebook pledges to change “Real Name” policy that deprived users of their fursonas. 

Facebook relaxes ‘real name’ policy in face of protest.  Alex Schultz, Facebook’s VP for growth and internationalization, issued a statement. Changes this December are supposed to reduce the number of people asked to verify names, and make it easier to confirm names their friends know them by.  This seems to allow room for performing names, but also for restricting without fairness or logic.  I say give no important info to this untrustworthy company.

By the way- Have you seen this ad plastered all over Facebook?  Or did the profiling bots decide this is what I’m into?  Pooping Unicorn Pitches Potty.

“Finland Has a Heavy Metal Version of Barney the Dinosaur.” (Tip: Higgs Raccooon.)

“Hevisaurus has been around since 2009, and features a heavy metal band of anthropomorphic cartoon-like dinosaurs.”

Pointless injokes with “Anonymous” and Furries. 

“Furry” jokes were used for infighting between People Who Spend Too Much Time Online. A hacker news site wrote about it, but I found nothing interesting.

The Coywolf: Coyote-Wolf hybrid makes new animal species emerging in eastern North America. 

Prehistoric art shows amazing eye for giant cats. “This art was done by a cave man 32,000 years ago.”

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AMAZING FURRY NEWS COMING SOON  – You’ll Do A Facepaw About #6!

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