Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week
April 30, 2018

Remembering Kim Wall, a journalist who found the best side of furries.

by Patch O'Furr

Furries are on a list of news articles by Kim Wall:

  • How Cubans deliver culture without internet
  • Inside the Ugandan Mall at the Center of China’s East African Investments
  • Asian, queer and dancing defiance: ‘Everything we do now is resistance’
  • When China’s Feminists Came to Washington
  • Ghost Stories: Idi Amin’s torture chambers
  • The Magic Kingdom Meets the Middle Kingdom in Shanghai Disneyland
  • Tour Buses to Sri Lanka’s Battlefields
  • Can This Tiny Island Restore Haitian Tourism?
  • It’s not about sex, it’s about identity: why furries are unique among fan cultures

Does it feel special to be on such an interesting list? It’s on a site for Kim Wall and her work. She was an independent journalist writing about identity, gender, pop-culture, social justice and foreign policy. Tributes from people who knew her paint a portrait of a talented person full of curiosity, who made a warm and lasting impression. Her stories spread that vibe on behalf of their subjects.

This headline understands- “It’s not about sex, it’s about identity: why furries are unique among fan cultures”. The story mentions bad media attention and furries being targets of hate while they celebrate self-expression. In my opinion, we were lucky to get such a good story and it’s one of a handful of the best you can find. This is why to welcome media notice if this little subculture is going to get it.

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April 26, 2018

Fluff Party in Salt Lake City: a furry dance at one of the two gay bars in Utah.

by Patch O'Furr

Furclubbing: “A repeat/regular nightclub event by furries for furries.” The concept has been spreading since the late 2000’s. It’s a dance party independent from cons. It builds on their growth but takes things farther. It’s more ambitious than informal meets and events that happen once. Those can stay inner-focused, but this brings partnership with new kinds of venues, and new support for what they host. It crosses a line to public space, so a stranger can walk in and discover their new favorite thing. It encourages new blood and crossover to other scenes. It makes subculture thrive. It’s a movement!

Parties that give a Q&A get a featured article. See The Furclub survey for questions and party list. Here’s Fluff Party in Salt Lake City, from organizer Oaken.


The party launch: 

Fluff Party was started on April 28th, 2017, at Club Try-Angles then known as “Bar Night” in the local Utah Furry group. Fluff Party started out with a sizeable furry group, for a small major city, of around 25 attendees. During the 2017 AWU Convention in downtown SLC, “Bar Night” transformed into Fluff Party. The event, held on October 27th, ended up being the largest to date with nearly 75 attendees from Washington, Colorado, and Idaho. This was later eclipsed by the January 2018 Fluff Party which had nearly 100 attendees. In February 2018, the Party extended the weekend to include a Saturday event with its first ever After Party, held at Area 51 Club in Salt Lake City, an 18+ dance club.

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April 24, 2018

Artists wanted – Hugo the Pink Cat is Artist of the Month, April 2018.

by Patch O'Furr

ARTISTS WANTED! Please share. Artist of the month is a program to commission and promote furries. It’s paid by site funding with gratitude to patrons. There will be a headline post for the chosen furry, and regular comics may be added too. Here’s art that previously appeared, and this month’s banner and comic from Hugo the Pink Cat.

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April 19, 2018

Furry founder Fred Patten saw more partying, less fandom in 2018 with the Ursa Major Awards.

by Patch O'Furr

Fred Patten started off with a message to Patch O’Furr:

This is a rant, as much as anything.  I wrote, as Secretary of the ALAA (AKA the Ursa Major Awards) to the AnthrOhio Committee, to invite it to host next year’s award presentation ceremony.  AnthrOhio is the new name of former Morphicon in Columbus, Ohio. They presented the Ursa Majors in 2008, 2011, and 2015.

I got a very nice reply from Danny Travis, this year’s Director of Programming for AnthrOhio.  He thinks it’s a great idea and has agreed.  But his reply implies that he’s never heard of the Ursa Major Awards, and that he was unaware that they have been presented at Morphicon/AnthrOhio in the past.

This makes me wonder how many of today’s furry conventions are being organized by people who are mainly interested in putting on a big party with fursuits, and little interest or knowledge in furry fandom beyond their own convention, including their own con’s history.  Some like Anthrocon with Dr. Sam Conway and CaliFur with Rod O’Riley (and any con with staffers who have been around for a while) know what’s going on. But how many are being organized by young people who only use the trappings of furry fandom to have a good time?

You have been following not only the conventions but a lot of the smaller furry parties and raves.  Do you get the impression that most attendees are more interested in partying then other active fandom?

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April 16, 2018

Love Match, Book 2 (2010-2012) by Kyell Gold – book review by Fred Patten

by Patch O'Furr

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

Love Match, Book 2 (2010-2012) by Kyell Gold. Illustrated by Rukis.
Dallas, TX, FurPlanet Productions, February 2018, trade paperback, $19.95 (316 pages), e-books $9.99.

This is book 2 of Gold’s Love Match trilogy. Book 1, titled just Love Match, was published last year in January 2017, and the final volume will presumably be published in early 2019.

Gold’s Love Match trilogy is a loose follow-up to his five “Dev and Lee” novels, set in his Forester University world; but its theme is tennis instead of football. Young (14 years old) Rochi “Rocky” N’Guwe, a black-backed jackal from the African nation of Lunda, is brought to the States with his mother in 2008 on a scholarship from the Palm Gables Tennis Center, a leading tennis college. During the two years of Book 1, Rocky matures, realizes his homosexuality, and develops a romance with his best friend, Marquize Alhazhari, a cheetah from Madiyah. He is horrified to discover that his younger sister Ori, to whom he is devoted and who has been left behind in Lunda, is being betrothed by their aunt in an arranged marriage. Rocky tries to earn enough money to bring Ori to Palm Gables. At the end of Book 1, Rocky and Marquize leave the Palm Gables Center and are thrust into the world of professional tennis.

And that’s about all that I can say about Book 2 without giving away major spoilers. There is a six-page Prologue set in the present (2015), during a climactic game between Rocky and his ongoing rival Braden Longacre, before getting into the main story. It establishes that both will get into tennis’ top ranks. But for the three years of Book 2, 2010 to 2012 – well, nothing much happens.

The story is narrated by Rocky N’Guwe, and it’s about him growing up from 16 to 18 years old in the environment of professional tennis. His friendship/gay romance with Marquize ebbs and flows. Rocky’s mother, who at first is always present as his chaperone and coach, leaves him to the care of a professional tennis coach while she concentrates on getting Ori into the States. He briefly crosses paths with Braden Longacre. Rocky, under his coach’s care, travels to tennis tournaments in several cities and develops new friendships among the other tennis players. In his free time on his own, he explores gay bars and clubs.

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April 11, 2018

Zoion, a magazine to promote furry art, is launching on Kickstarter.

by Patch O'Furr

Postcards handed out at Furry Weekend Atlanta

On Kickstarter: an Anthropomorphic Art Magazine is being launched by Zoion Media and its creator Pulsar. (It ends on April 29, so don’t wait to support.)

Our goal is to create a contemporary, well designed, image-driven magazine focusing on clean, evocative, highly artistic, well developed and well executed anthropomorphic art and themes. We want to make something the average furry is proud to show their non-furry friends to give them an idea of what furry art is all about.

Pulsar talked about inspiration for a print magazine to promote furry fandom creators and artists:

“I’ve always been an artist and I read a lot on contemporary fine art. I remember standing in the bookstore browsing Juxtapoz and Hi-Fructose and thinking, ‘there needs to be something just like this for furry art’.”

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April 10, 2018

Puppy play incident at Furry Weekend Atlanta – is that OK in public? (Part 2)

by Patch O'Furr

Continuing from part 1: Controversy erupted about a video from FWA that appeared to show sex in public, but it didn’t. It was puppy players wrestling (moshing). Pup play is an offshoot of the leather scene that overlaps with furry, but isn’t always welcome. The behavior at FWA was one issue – and then a separate, bigger debate came up about welcoming that interest at furry cons. Here’s a point/counterpoint about it.

Click through above for more from Pup Matthias, a Dogpatch Press staffer who says “Pups are a spectrum of sexual and non sexual like furries, but they haven’t had people whitewash their history”. 

He gave further explanation:

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April 10, 2018

Puppy play incident at Furry Weekend Atlanta – is that OK in public? (Part 1)

by Patch O'Furr

Furry twitter was growling about two puppies wrestling in the middle of a hotel lobby. It was an “OMG! Furs are having sex in public at FWA” thing. It started with one tweet of a video that sort of looks like people having sex – but then the subjects posted a close-up 360 video showing it wasn’t. Even so, online outrage kept getting the video taken down from Youtube (see it on Vimeo).

Changa Lion of the Prancing Skiltaire house, a graymuzzle furry who staffed at ConFurence and tipped me about this, said it resembled plenty of previous “bullshit said about older cons that wasn’t actually true”:

It’s like it becomes self-reinforcing. No matter what is said, it’s now firmly in place in people’s minds that furs were having sex in public at FWA. I almost want a yearly award for the biggest fan outrage of the year that is actually bullshit.

What were they doing?

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April 9, 2018

Crafter’s Passion, by Kris Schnee – book review by Fred Patten

by Patch O'Furr

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

Crafter’s Passion by Kris Schnee.
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, March 2018, trade paperback, $7.99 (247 pages).

This actually shouldn’t be reviewed here because it’s not anthropomorphic. But it’s in Kris Schnee’s Thousand Tales series, and the previous four books all had protagonists who became fantasy animals: a griffin, a squirrel-girl, a coyote-man, and a pegasus. If you’re a Thousand Tales fan, you’ll want to read it despite its protagonist remaining human.

Schnee’s Thousand Tales books aren’t meant to be furry fiction, but science-fiction. Schnee postulates that by 2038, Artificial Intelligences have become so advanced/powerful that when a new one code-named Ludo is put in charge of the Thousand Tales interactive game, and programmed to make sure its players “have fun”, Ludo does everything to ensure that they have fun – including giving them the choice of abandoning their human bodies and living in Thousand Tales permanently, as the creature of their choice.

The process involves the scanning of their brains (an expensive process that results in the death of their human bodies) and the transfer of their minds to Ludo’s control within its Thousand Tales universe. Most governments (much more regimented than today) oppose this. But it involves a person’s free choice, and some experts argue that the process involves the successful transferral of the person into a new body without being killed.

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April 4, 2018

Rukus, the indie furry movie, is coming to Furry Weekend Atlanta

by Patch O'Furr

On April 6, catch the convention debut of an Official Selection from SF IndieFest and the SXSW Film Festival. 

FWA just updated their schedule with all the details. Director Brett Hanover and collaborators will be in attendance. It will be an “After Dark Panel.” FWA is part of the story of the movie – it’s a local con for the film makers who come from Memphis.

Rukus (2018, 87 min):

In January I helped bring a large furry group to SF Indiefest. It was an awesome experience, and cinema lovers who appreciate the art form should get a thrill from it. Rukus is punk influenced storytelling between queer coming-of-age story, experimental fiction, and a love letter to fandom. This isn’t a sunny movie but it has joy and passion in it. There’s suicide, sex, and finding identity. It rewards multiple watches where you can peel up the rough edges to find a lot going on underneath. My favorite part is how it takes chances with a shoestring budget, and it’s something a community can count as a DIY product from itself. (I’d love to see that become a scene.) Plus, screening at SXSW is a big deal in the larger scheme of things.

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