Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer. 
Here’s the first original short story anthology from Goal Publications, Symbol of a Nation, edited by Fred Patten. It will be released at Anthrocon 2017 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania over the June 29-July 3 five-day weekend. Find Goal Publications there at F19 in the dealer’s room!
In front of millions at San Francisco Pride 2015! (Thanks: Chrisastro.com)
Bay Area Furries are marching in the 2017 San Francisco Pride Parade on Sunday, June 25. It’s one of the largest and most colorful events in San Francisco and will be on TV. There have been better and better responses each time, and 70 or more are signed up. Get ready for the best parade ever! (See previous announcement about how to join, and the Meetup page for RSVP and discussion.)
Here’s what you need to know:
Pic by Vincent.
Marchers: Arrive at 100-150 Main Street. Be no earlier than 9:30am and no later than 11:40.
Volunteers: Arrive at 100-150 Main Street. Be no earlier than 9:30am and no later than 11.
To arrive from BART, exit at Embarcadero Station. Go up on the Main St. / Beale St. side.
Watchers: Be anywhere along the Market Street parade route, and the parade starts at 10:30.
Parade start: 12:30pm-1pm. (Last time we were in the parade, starting was delayed by hours due to being way more busy than they planned. Do be patient, but don’t be late. The parade doesn’t wait for latecomers.)
Thanks to Lamar for submitting. His articles on Flayrah include this recommended one: “Furry, not an obscure little fandom any more” – it’s as relevant today as in 2011.
A couple of weeks ago I put out a call via Twitter, helpfully reposted by some high profile people, to see if I could get any first hand reports of how Convention and Security staff handled issues at Conventions.
I had exactly three replies in total. One saying that they had once reported someone vaping inside the convention space. One security staffer who was unable to discuss any details but expressed that incidents of harassment do happen, and have to be handled correctly and with care. And finally, another con staffer who accused me of being on a “fishing expedition” and using rumours to ascribe bad faith.
And outside of twitter I talked to a young member of the fandom, who continues to receive targeted convention related harassment. I’m going to call him Adrian, but that’s not his real name. Adrian shared copies of the messages. They include slurs and rants, including for instance “You ATTENTION seeking c***”. Adrian received this harassment, for speaking out about what happened to him at a convention some years ago. I ask him to talk about it.
Reptile Channel (UPDATE: 450,000+ subscribers in 2020, joined in 2016) — not the same as former The Reptile Channel (joined in 2014).
Love your pets. But don’t eat your pets. And definitely don’t stomp them to death for sadistic sexual pleasure. That’s known as crush fetish, a thankfully illegal practice that qualifies for the Internet Hall Of Shame because of kitten murder. Such animal abuse has earned news and legal bans, but corporations have a problem with keeping it off their platforms. (Gizmodo: YouTube Won’t Ban A Guy Who Crushes Animals to Death.)
We can talk about weird stuff here. If you have gone down some shady alleys on the internet, you might have seen vore fetish. (That’s the erotic fantasy for consuming others or being consumed, which might involve dragons.) It’s usually harmless and imaginary in fiction and role-play.
A tip came in about a story that blurs the lines between those things. Youtube’s Reptile Channel is a producer of videos that show small animals being fed to larger ones. They use a reasonable-sounding cover story about science, education and necessary feeding. But it’s tainted with a nasty secret: it was founded in vore fetishism, with a history of being protested.
A Burning Man art car will carry furries in the SF Pride parade… If a few furs step up to volunteer as safety monitors.
Just a few more are needed to qualify. Time is short to make it happen on 6/25/17. See info below and ACT NOW!
Here’s some cool art cars at Burning Man, and even more here. (Those are NOT FOR THE PARADE, the car will be a surprise.)
Furries are ready for a better parade than ever before. They got involved around 2002-2004, and returned with a float in 2014-2015, but relaxed with just a booth in 2016. The time is right for a big comeback. Before now they used plain rental trucks, but even modest effort got amazing feedback for putting 50+ members in front of crowds and media. (Take a look back at fursuiting in 2012, a float in 2015, and much more on the Pride tag.)
Capri, a fabulous transgender dragon, sent this memory:
In the last year we did the parade, I met a great friend who helped me to start transition. I managed to walk the entire way in fursuit, a feat I am quite proud of. I still use that video to show off my suit. I also really enjoyed passing by the judges and having one of them say awesome words of kindness to me. We went to a Korean barbeque place afterwords and mistakenly thought it was all you can eat. (Patch): sorry, I confused it with a different place I was at once before… (Capri): It was fine, I should be the sorry one, you took care of it and the bill was pretty staggering.
That’s the positive vibe that furries bring to Pride. But there’s an important ingredient they need to make it happen.
Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.
Monkey Wars, by Richard Kurti
NYC, Delacorte Press, January 2015, hardcover $17.00 (409 [+1] pages), Kindle $10.99.
Monkey Wars has been described as “a dark fable in the tradition of” – different reviewers have compared it to several other adult talking-animal novels; but almost always including Animal Farm and Watership Down. The British edition was nominated for two literary awards. It has been translated into French, German, and Japanese.
The novel, set in India, is based on the proliferation of wild street monkeys, usually rhesus macaques, in Delhi and Kolkata. They travel in troops and attack people if they are disturbed – sometimes when not provoked. The specific event that inspired Monkey Wars was from The New Delhi Times for 21 October 2007: “In a sinister development, the deputy mayor of Delhi, S. S. Bajwa, died this morning after being attacked by a gang of rhesus macaques.” But whenever the authorities try to curb the monkey problem, they are attacked by devout Hindus because all monkeys are believed to be sacred to Hanuman, the monkey god. Authorities have tried importing langur monkeys, a larger species, to scare the rhesus monkeys away, but with mixed success.
(This is still a problem. The New Indian Express reported on April 6, 2017 the discovery of a wild naked girl about 8 to 10 years old living with a troop of monkeys in the forests in northern India. When local police tried to remove her, they were attacked by the monkeys acting as though they were protecting one of their troop. The story was almost immediately disproven – the girl was wearing rags, and the monkeys ran away without attacking anyone. Authorities now believe that the girl, who is severely retarded, was recently abandoned by her family. But the story of a wild child being adopted and raised in the forests for years by monkeys was considered plausible.)
“They struck at noon.
Monkeys shrieked in confusion as langur fighters sprang down from the cemetery walls, howling in an attacking frenzy. As they stormed through the tombs, fear and panic flashed everywhere. And with the screams came the smell of blood.” (p. 5)
Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.
The Mask of Bone, by Brian Panthera
Bloomington, IN, iUniverse, November 2016, trade paperback $20.99 (xvii + 331 pages), Kindle $3.99.
The Mask of Bone – which is only Book 1 of the Otherworlds saga – is High Fantasy. Really High Fantasy, replete with lots of footnotes. The first footnote is: “To reduce confusion, calendar dates in the text will use the Universal Calendar (UC), based on the Central Timekeeping System used by the kitsune of the dimension of Escher. 11973 UC corresponds to roughly 2001 A.D. in the Gregorian Calendar used in most dimensional variations of Earth, and 1507 KI in the calendar on most of Tayrik, which dates back to […]” Does that reduce confusion? The world of Tayrik is where the action begins.
“Long ago, the mask of bone was shattered, its bearer slain, the pieces stolen. They were scattered through the dimensions to prevent its reassembly.” (blurb) Xolotl, the Aztec guide to the dead, wants the Mask reassembled, and he drafts Pflarrian to do it. Pflarrian Collifox is a student at the Mirial’s Rock Academy of Magic (and Mayhem) on Tayrik who is slowly turning into a fox. He looks like a gaunt human with “a long, bushy red tail sticking through a hole in his jeans, and a pair of large, pointy, red, furry, fox ears sticking up from under a shock of long reddish-brown hair that was usually pulled back in a rough ponytail.” (p. ix) Professor Verdigris, who is a dragon, has assigned Pflarrian to do something entirely different, but Xolotl waylays him and persuades him to search the dimensions for the pieces of the Mask before he finishes turning into a fox. Got all that?
Oh, and Pflarr’s girlfriend Marani is a sometimes-impulsive anthro jaguaress:
“She paused in the kitchen just long enough to wash Pflarrian’s blood from her claws before returning to bed.” (p. 78)
Despite The Mask of Bone’s being set in a supposedly predominantly human dimension, there are more anthropomorphic animals than humans in this novel; including gods taking on anthro animal forms:
“It was here, finally, that the goddess [Isis] found the one she had come here to speak with. He stood slightly stooped over as he leaned on the edge of a great carved-marble reflecting pool, gazing at something only he could see. Her quarry [Xolotl] was an impressive sight. Tall and broad-shouldered, he was a humanoid canine like the goddess’s current form, but where she had taken the form of a jackal, he bore the form and shape of heavier-set dog-being, looking more like a rough-coat collie. His fur was a dark, almost metallic bronze in most places, accented here and there with white and bone-colored highlights. Fine robes fit for an emperor draped his body, glowing with the colors of the setting sun. They were resplendent in rich tones of orange and red. His head was adorned with a heavy-looking gold crown of sorts, bedecked with an array of long, brightly colored feathers. They swept back from just behind his canine ears to a point almost two feet over his head. Matching golden bracelets rode his wrists. A chunky, heavy necklace formed of square blocks of gold graced his neck and shoulders, barely visible through the thick ruff of fur about his neck.” (p. xiv)
I’ve quoted that at length to give you a taste of Panthera’s opulent writing style. The book is full of furry references. Isis has issues with cat-headed Bastet. One of a college professor’s assistants is Kalya, an anthro black-footed ferret. Someone mentions getting in a shipment of citrus fruits from the Felinid Empire. “It [a doorknock] was answered by a diminutive female mouse in pale blue student’s robes. She looked up at Pflarrian, who towered a good two feet over her, and blinked in surprise.” (p. 55) “The immortal had rented a private room at the Sign of the Nine Tails, a kitsune-run restaurant of some renown near Temple Road.” (p. 83) “The wide variety of beings that inhabited the city caught the wolf’s attention. Humans, felines, canines, something with long, furless, pointed ears that Dashell figured must have been an elf, and a myriad variety of others!” (p. 49) Pflarr’s turning into a fox is constantly kept before the reader: “With a resigned sigh, Pflarrian knelt on the stone floor, making sure not to kneel on his own tail.” (p. 7)
To cut to the admittedly-confusing plot, the first page of the story (as distinct from the 17-page Prologue) begins:
“Dashell awoke to pain. It filled his head to the tips of his fuzzy black ears, ran down his arms and legs, and caused his furry wolf’s tail to twitch in irritation. It made him feel is if someone had been trying to use him as a pincushion.
In other words, he had a hangover.” (p. 1)
Dashell Grauvolf, an alternating black-&-white-furred anthro wolf, is also a college student (computer sciences major) in his dimension. He is kidnapped by a wannabe-demonic mad scientist in Pflarrian’s dimension, escapes before he can be experimented upon (MUHAHAHA!), and is rescued (kind of) by Pflarrian (they think by coincidence, but not really).
Xolotl, who has been scrying what is happening to Dashell (read the book to learn why), has his attention drawn to Pflarrian. He is shocked to find that the same spell that is turning Pflarrian into a fox has made him Xolotl’s champion, even if no one is aware of it. So he appears to Pflarrian to persuade him to search the dimensions for the pieces of the Mask of Bone. But Pflarr doesn’t go alone! He brings Dashell, Marani, and her big (over 8 feet tall) sister Hakarra with him.
They set sail for the Felinid Empire (and promptly get into a sea battle with anthro animal pirates) on page 107. The rest of the 331-page novel is Pflarr’s & Dashell’s adventures looking for the pieces of the Mask of Bone. They don’t find them yet. To be continued in Otherworlds, Book 2: The Fated Ones.
The Mask of Bone (cover imagery © Thinkstock) is good fun, especially if you like a lot of transformations. Be prepared for one of the characters (a wolf) to have a thick German accent:
“She sighed. ‘I vill explain later, D’shal. Meanvile, ve haf to make sure neizzer Faylarrian nor Zaul do anyzing rash, ja?’” (p. 64)
To support writing by furries, for furries, please visit Dogpatch Press on Patreon. You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, and support all of the team’s news and reviews.
Do you love trash like I do? In the 1970’s, exploitation movies became a thing where trash and sleaze were loveable qualities. They had fun doing stuff the mainstream wouldn’t do. Along with the bad, came good access for audiences that Hollywood didn’t represent, like minorities and subcultures. Now “Fursploitation” is creeping into popular awareness. I characterize it that way if it portrays “furries” with off-the-rack, poorly fitting mascot costumes and orgy jokes. That stuff may not play well with furries, but it can. They’ll probably dislike it if it has low effort at research, or feels carelessly opportunistic or mean, but it helps to be indie and share inside references to laugh together. A success would be CollegeHumor’s “Furry Force”, which the fandom took with good humor.
Furry Nights is an indie horror movie directed by J. Zachary. It premiered in late 2016 with a theater show in Atlanta. I heard from several very happy furry watchers who attended. Then Zachary asked me to tell you about it.
Furry Nights is now available on iTunes. Here’s the synopsis from the official website:
“What begins as a carefree weekend amongst a group of camping teens soon takes a strange turn when the gang discovers they are not alone in the forest. FURRIES have rooted camp just across the nearby lake. Not worried about the “party animals,” the kids sleep soundly that night, only to be woken by a real life horror — A BEAR! One of the teens shoots and kills the grizzly monster, but quickly realizes the tragic truth — HE HAS SHOT A FURRY . . . Now, the maniacal furries will stop at nothing to make them pay . . .
CAN THE TEENS SURVIVE THE REVENGE OF THE FURRIES?!”
@KaiWulf said: “Indy film, very campy. We had a good laugh.” And here’s another happy watcher.
Meet Clumzy Lion from Toronto. He was one of 5,138 furries who came to Biggest Little Fur Con in Reno on June 1-4, 2017. His trip included a night in San Francisco’s popular Fisherman’s Wharf area before flying home. That’s where he lost his head. Clumzy’s car was broken into, and they even took his passport so he couldn’t fly. Being robbed and stuck is much worse than just a sad feline.
Remember a similar fursuit theft that made local news by SFist and Broke-Ass Stuart? More about that below. They’re linked in case they can help.
(Update: thanks to @SFist for sharing the story!)
“the truth” – @tinydeerguy
Tinydeerguy’s tweet shows his character being unhappy that being tame is less popular than being sexy. It has thousands of likes and the comments agree. They look down on this situation, or admit it’s true by asking him to take it all off.
Tinydeerguy’s FA gallery demonstrates it with view numbers. The first page has many tame cartoons with a range of cute stories, but about one in eight are labeled “oh look porn”, “yay another porn,” etc. They don’t tease, they get right to the point – dicks! Art in the dirty 1/8 gets twice as many views.
