Patch O'Furr

November 1, 2016

FUTURE FURSUITING: furry’s most original creations and the rise of tech-enabled smart suits.

by Patch O'Furr

The most original creations of furry fandom.

Here’s a fun feature about the future. But first, let me make a bold claim about fursuiting.

Male-Peacock-displaying Mascots and costuming have been around forever. But furries are doing something new. They don’t just play with generic icons from myths and media. They add original fursonas and custom craft for everyone. It makes a subculture with personal expression beyond anything else.

Of course, many furs don’t have (or want) fursuits. But the ones who do make a photogenic face of fandom. Other groups do art and writing like this one, but I don’t think anyone else does costuming in such a specialized and devoted way. So there’s nothing wrong with the way the fursuiters stand out. Everything else is imagination – they bring it to life and help to define the tactile name of “furry”. And the quality is developing beyond anything you can buy commercially. Some dedicated makers now have careers by fans, for fans, leading a Furry Economy with an exciting future. Look forward to amazing things.

Pic: CanineHybrid

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October 31, 2016

The Goat: Building a Perfect Victim, by Bill Kieffer – review by Howl.

by Patch O'Furr

Howl of Thurston Howl Publications sends this guest review. Thanks Howl!

REVIEW OF THE GOAT: BUILDING A PERFECT VICTIM BY BILL KIEFFER

goat Shock. From beginning to end. If you ever want a book to slap you in the face as hard as possible, this…this is for you.

Frank is a car worker. He is not gay. To verify this, he would not hesitate to glare you down. He would not hesitate to hit you. He would not hesitate to force you into his car. He would not hesitate to force your head on his cock and eventually force you to swallow. This is how he started to develop a relationship with Glenn.

Glenn is a cybermancer, strong with technological pseudomagic but not so great at wards like Frank. Loving the utter dominance Frank forces onto him, Glenn enters into an S&M relationship with the mechanic. However, the main story arc occurs when Glenn reveals that he is species-dysmorphic: despite being born in a human body, his natural identity is that of a goat. Unable to pass the necessary ani-mage tests, he can only dream about becoming a goat. However, Frank is a little better with magic…

This book is by NO MEANS a kinky romance. This is, as the author claims, horror erotica. Even as a Stephen King and Clive Barker fan, I was cringing so hard from the beginning and ending of the book, and I’m not sure I will fully recover in the next week. I might have to read My Little Pony fanfiction to survive in fact.

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October 25, 2016

Fandom grows in Southeast Asia – could it bring culture clash with Islam and authoritarianism?

by Patch O'Furr

By Patch O’Furr and Fred Patten, furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Remember the amazing story about Syrian refugee kids at VancouFur? They were freshly arrived in Canada from a conservative arabic country, and housed in the same hotel with the furries. At first there were warnings and high caution about the situation. Then the kids went wild about how cool it was. Remember that happened when you read the culture clash topic below!

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October 24, 2016

Tip Your Makers! Why to pay more for art to improve commissioning and spread the love.

by Patch O'Furr

Badges from Mary Mouse

Missing, flaky commissions suck. it’s a chronic problem that’s only modestly addressed by small watchdogs like the Artist Beware community.

Things should be smoother. But there’s a reason why commissioning is unpredictable. Things are dragged down by underbidding among artists. Nobody becomes an artist to get rich, and many don’t charge enough for the service they’re doing.

Why ask a customer to fix problems of a business? I get it… if someone promises something, they should deliver without expecting more than they earn. But give me a minute… if this is a passion-driven fandom and not a cut-throat market, maybe there’s a little room for common problem-solving and partnership.

Assume good faith. Give credit to artists for being full of love for what they do. But it’s awfully hard to get good and be competitive. That’s how so many of them plan to get things done on a thin margin and tight schedules. It’s easy for plans to go off the rails, people get sick, there’s unexpected mistakes or accidents, and burnout is common. Then commissioners are left waiting for extra weeks, months… or nearly forever.

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October 19, 2016

SITE UPDATE – The first fursuiter, and Otaku Trucker: Furry Road.

by Patch O'Furr

You might see less posting here for a week – I’m busy writing for a book. That’s Furries Among Us (part 2) from Thurston Howl Publishing. (The Ursa Major Award went to Howl’s first book of essays about the fandom, so they made a new “nonfiction” award.)

My chapter is “The Furclub movement – independent furry night life is thriving!” Furry dance parties happen around the world, so if you see new dances start anywhere, please send info for the list. (To San Francisco furs, I can’t say anything now, but expect some good news soon.)

It’s Furry Book Month, so check out some more of the fandom’s awesome creativity. Flayrah finally started approving new posts about that. Their slowness might have to do with a big rise in great reader comments here. And so does this…

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October 18, 2016

Dawn [and] Edward by Marcus LaGrone – book reviews by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

Dawn, by Marcus J. LaGrone. Illustrated by Minna Sundberg.
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, December 2011, trade paperback $14.95 ([1 +] 192 pages), Kindle $3.95.

Edward, by Marcus LaGrone.
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, January 2013, trade paperback $9.95 (314 pages), Kindle $2.99.

The Highlands of Afon series must be science-fiction since the novels are set on the planets Afon and Ramidar in the far future, when humans have spread throughout the galaxy. But they read more like adolescent funny-animal dramatic fantasies featuring Afon’s dominant felinoid “race”, the Taik. (They aren’t just on Afon; they too have spread through the galaxy. See the complex “Introduction to the races and cultures”.) There are also the Shukurae, oversimplified as huge (9’ tall) muscular warthogs, intimidating but loyal to Taik leadership, and the Gelkin, short, squat, bearlike, and militaristic; both also spacefaring peoples.

Dawn is the story, in flashback, of Dawn Winteroak. She’s the Taik teenage schoolgirl in the middle on Minna Sundberg’s cover. Besides other adolescent problems, she’s embarrassed because her fur is “boring. Black and plain, not a spot or stripe to be seen. All her sisters had wonderful coats with spots and rosettes, a fact they used to take some pride in pointing out to her.” (blurb)

Dawn has worse problems. Her story begins: “As Dawn cracked open her eyes, she realized one thing immediately: she hurt. From the tip of her pointy ears to the end of her fuzzy tail she hurt. Even her fur hurt. How does fur hurt? she wondered. Well she wasn’t sure, but it certainly did. She sat up only to find that it was possible to hurt even more! Her ears rang and her head throbbed as she straightened up her spine. Looking down she noticed her jet black fur was horribly tousled and her dress, a gift for her fourteenth birthday all of a week ago, was now in tatters. Shredded and charred, it still stank of smoke.” (p. 3)

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October 13, 2016

A welcome new category for the Ursa Major Awards: Best Anthropomorphic Non-Fiction.

by Patch O'Furr

WHY DON’T FURRIES RECOGNIZE GOOD JOURNALISM?

This topic has come up before: “Bay Area Furs find out why there should be a Furry award for Best Journalism” (see some good articles within) – and – “VICE looks back on the Midwest Furfest attack, earning kudos for thoughtful journalism.”

The simplistic answer is – back around 2001, this little fan group was mistreated by Vanity Fair, MTV and CSI. Forevermore, “The Media” was a thing to hate.

But it’s not so simple. In a chicken-or-egg way, “The Media” deserves some credit for creating furries. (It’s a FANdom!) That usually means fiction media, but there’s much more than that. There’s the “science” part of science fiction; transhumanism, animals and nature, and anything about growing a self-defined subculture. There’s info coming from the Anthropomorphic Research Project. A top selling nonfiction book (from Thurston Howl publishers) is the fandom-essay collection Furries Among Us.

Nonfiction is a big deal in fandom for anthropomorphic animals.

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October 12, 2016

Call for submissions: The Symbol of a Nation, a new anthology edited by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer. This goes out a little late (sorry). You might also be interested in others announced here at Adjective Species .

Goal Publications is announcing its first original short story anthology.

Title: The Symbol of a Nation. Theme: national animals. Deadline: December 1^st, 2016.

Wanted: original short stories (no reprints) of 2,000 to 15,000 words, featuring furries that are the national animals of countries, such as Afghanistan’s snow leopard, Algeria’s fennec, Australia’s red kangaroo, Bangladesh’s tiger, Canada’s beaver, Denmark’s swan, Eritrea’s camel, France’s rooster (fighting cock), Germany’s black eagle, Honduras’ white-tailed deer, Italy’s wolf, the U.S.’s bald eagle … There are over 200 countries and most of them have a national animal.

For this anthology, we are extending the theme to the official animals of provinces and states. There are several animals such as the koala (Queensland) and platypus (New South Wales) of Australia, or the giant squirrel (Maharashtra) and red panda (Sikkim) of India, or the coyote (South Dakota) and raccoon (Tennessee) of North America that are not national animals, but are the official animals of provinces or states.

But: this is limited to the officially adopted animals (including birds) of national or sub-national entities only. No sports team mascots, corporate mascots like the NBC peacock, political party mascots, or breakfast cereal mascots. No fictional official animals or countries like Transylvania and vampire bats. However, some countries have both a national animal and a national bird, such as Chile – its animal is the huemal, an Andean deer, and its bird is the Andean condor. We will accept stories featuring either or both.

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October 11, 2016

Is this news editorial cartoon about furries making fun of a tragedy?

by Patch O'Furr

Please help children of the tragedy in this post: Support the Yost family and In Loving Memory Of Billy Boucher.

News tip thanks to Spottacus. Below is his post about an editorial cartoon in the OC Weekly about a triple homicide in Southern California.

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Spottacus Cheetah: “Making fun of murdered family is so offensive.”

“…I imagine the family, somewhat devastated by the murder, seeing two people in costume speculating with happy smiles about what the killers were wearing. That just seems to belittle the tragedy.

In contrast, consider the post-massacre Hebdo cartoon, of a saddened Muhammed grieving over the deaths there.

(Paris, 2015: “4 Cartoonists Killed In Attack On Charlie Hebdo Newspaper“.)

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October 10, 2016

A brief history of who ruined furry.

by Patch O'Furr

fritz-the-cat-movie-poster-1972-1010196225 Many people are to blame for ruining furry. This list isn’t comprehensive, and some of the jerks on it caused multiple problems at the same time.

1960’s – 1970’s: Artists ruined furry.

Underground comic artists made a plan to stigmatize fans of funny-animal comics by putting adult stuff in ones like Robert Crumb’s Fritz The Cat and Reed Waller’s Omaha The Cat Dancer. It worked well enough to keep fans from openly using the “furry” name until the 1980’s.

1985-1988: “Skunkfuckers” ruined furry.

It was just starting to be OK to be furry in public. Then some bad apples got us kicked out of respectable science fiction fandom. Look at these 1980’s convention room party flyers from Lance Rund and Sy – this is the kind of thing that made furries get isolated apart from other fans, with our own private shame-cons.

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