Furry friends, I’m honored to share a special invitation to you from media producer Ben McShane. A professional studio is being offered for you to make YOUR video show. (Please be aware this is on site in Burbank, CA.)
When Ben’s call for furry talent came to my inbox, I had to be careful to screen it. (We know about ‘the media,’ right?) I saw that Ben’s genuinely into cool stuff, has worked on some shows you may know (Battlebots, Shark Tank), and is associated with Nerdist. I’m copying from his resume to show the guy who’s inviting you:
Producer, Project Alpha – Legendary Digital Networks / Nerdist Industries
“Currently I am the producer on a number of shows for Project Alpha, the exclusive, interactive, live-streaming SVOD portal for Legendary Digital Networks. I manage a small budget, oversee staff hires for the shows, and lead creative. Many hats!
Live broadcast and digital content are exciting new frontiers for me as a producer. As a life-long table top gamer and über-geek, coming to work with the Nerdist and Geek & Sundry families has already been one of the most memorable stops of my career. I can’t wait for the shows to launch so I can say more!”
Check Project Alpha and browse the shows to get some idea of what they already have… I sense a great opportunity.
Here’s a special announcement from Joe Strike. Joe’s a writer and reporter about animation for the New York Daily News and Animation World Network. His website shows work with TV cartoons you may know. He’s a first-wave furry “greymuzzle.” And he talks like a velvet alligator on the phone.
Joe has an incredibly exciting book coming out. He’s putting the story of furry fandom in print from an established publisher. He wants your help.
I want to tell your story in Furry Nation.
I’m in the final stages of writing Furry Nation, the first book to chart the birth and growth of furry fandom and its relation to the anthropomorphic instinct that’s been part of civilization from prehistoric cave paintings of animal people and animal-headed Egyptian gods to the modern day. Furry Nation will be published fall 2017 by Cleis Press. To learn more visit www.furrynation.com
Furry Nation will include a handful of profiles of furry artists, published authors and craftspeople. (Furry sculptures, clothing, accessories, etc.) If you’d like to be in the book, please contact me by December 26 at info[at]furrynation[dot]com. I want to hear about your work, your first interest in anthro characters, and how you found the fandom; please include links to your work. (Sorry fursuiters but that section of the book has already been written.)
Thanx much!
– Joe Strike
Write to info[at]furrynation[dot]com, by January 6.
Personally, I have been urging the creation of a coffee table furry book for years – from the history and graphics, to fursuit fashion photography. Like the kind of beautiful but info-packed bibles that Taschen is known for. (I even outlined such a book – but what a big project that is!)
Now I’m delighted to hear that Joe has a contract with Cleis Press to publish Furry Nation in fall 2017. Cleis has an eminent 36-year history as “the largest independent sexuality publishing company in the United States.” Don’t get too mad about being grouped with erotica; emphasize independent. It’s a chance-taking, open-minded platform that can do justice to an alternative subculture. They explain on LinkedIn:
Cleis Press publishes provocative, intelligent books across genres. Whether literary fiction, human rights, mystery, romance, erotica, LGBTQ studies, pulp fiction, or memoir, you know that if it’s outside the ordinary, it’s Cleis Press.
Don’t overlook more cool books! Dogpatch Press’s own star guest poster, Fred Patten, has Furry Fandom Conventions, 1989-2015 from McFarland Press. (That’s an academic/reference publisher where you’d find the book in a library. So you might consider Joe’s the “first” as a narrative history on the shelf at an indie or alternative bookstore.)
Fred’s Publishing for Furries article helps to show how special these are in the publishing world. Until now, there’s been almost nothing at book stores. Whatever you’re looking for in a furry book, these are extremely cool happenings.
And I can’t wait to see more. Grubbs Grizzzly (of Ask Papabear) has The Furry Book on the way, too.
Hey there! Arrkay here from Culturally F’d with a special guest post. I want to open right away with a new T-Shirt design poll, closing on Sunday Nov. 29:
Culturally F’d giving some Sh**ts away
SHIRTS that is! Sign up to our newsletter to enter into a draw for the winning design. Here’s what Rusty has to say about it:
Subscribe to Culturally F’ds newsletter at www.culturallyfd.com to enter the draw to win. If the shirts end up in a tie, then both will end up going to print.
Previously on Culturally F’d
Over on my channel, we discuss how we define our community and how a fur might describe it themselves in: Hobby, Lifestyle, Fandom: Defining Furry.
Bandit from The Raccoon’s Den came onto F’d to discuss how he got started, what it takes to become a YouTuber and conquering social anxiety.
Still bummed out about the US Election? Maybe these 19 unlikely cartoon candidates will cheer you up:
A regular YouTube feature – call for submissions
Do you have a YouTube channel? Right here on Dogpatch Press, we’re looking to fill in a new monthly guest post. It will feature all the current and best YouTube videos that furries are producing. The primary goal is to expose more YouTube creators from our fandom to more furries. The secondary goal is to create a video creator network to encourage more collaboration between Furries on the video platform. Please message me (Arrkay at culturally.fd@gmail.com) if you have a channel you want us to include or at least investigate. We are looking for YouTube channels that are up to date and posting new content regularly.
Here are some fine channels that you should subscribe to in the mean time:
Betsy Lee – An animator with an ongoing fantasy series “No Evil”. A very impressive production for a small crew, the story reminds me very much of a dungeons and dragons role-play campaign. You may need to watch the back-log of episodes to figure out what’s going on with the cast of characters right now.
Blü – Blu The Dragon is an australian dancer/performer/choreographer, and does profanity infused vlogs about life and furries.
Culturally F’d – Hey that’s my channel! Every other week we discuss anthro animals in culture and mass media. Everything from cave paintings to what the furry fandom might look like tomorrow. The F’d stands for Furry. We also have regular “F’d Up Dates” with Rusty Shacklefur, a rabbit from the moon. I should also mention we have a Patreon and as of Dec 1 2016, a merch store!
EZ Wolf – Professional quality photography and videography. They are responsible for many music videos, dance videos and dramas starring fursuiters that have gone viral.
Furries in the Media– Aberguine carefully dissects instances where furries are represented in news reports or fiction, and grades them on Accuracy and Spirit.
Majira Strawberry– This fursuited vlogger is probably the most popular furry YouTuber with over 44,000 subscribers. Majira specializes in comedy skits, Q&A’s, and collaborating with other fursuiters in his area and at cons.
The Raccoon’s Den– The Docu-Dramadey of the fandom, Bandit and friends explore furry parties of California and dramatizes furry-life outside of the parties. They also have vlog style “Drakes Corner” videos and they produce a podcast “Pawesome”. Check out Patch’s article on them!
Furry.Today – Not a YouTuber, but a great resource for finding new fluffy videos from all sources.
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.
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 1st, 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.
It’s another event from the WILD THINGS crew – producers of sexy, gutsy, creative happenings for boundary-breaking expression. There may be no other formal events in the world like this!
With their previous events, Dogpatch Press asked: is furry a “sex” thing? NO, but there’s overlap… nothing wrong with that. There are all kinds of other hobbies like that. If you read the naughty history of their events, don’t overlook the tags: BDSM, cat box cake, controversy, fetish, furries, kink, murrsuits, petplay, porn, sex… Wild Things!
Now here’s the new one everyone’s been waiting for. (NSFW poster below.)
Huskyteer of the Furry Writers’ Guild sends a super cool announcement for fandom book lovers. Furry Book Month is an initiative to promote anthropomorphic literature. Please give some love to the authors and publishers of the fandom – not just established ones you know, but also newer ones like Thurston Howl and Weasel Press. Learn more in Fred Patten’s recent article, The State of Furry Publishing.
This October, we’re raising the profile of anthropomorphic literature and bringing it to a wider audience.
The Furry Writers’ Guild has joined forces with some of our fandom’s great authors and publishers. They will offer special deals during the month, from free shipping and discount codes to free books.
Even if you don’t read furry fiction yet, try the special offers for a furry book in October.
Already a reader? Give a book to a friend, try a new author, or write a book review! Reviews on Amazon and Goodreads can be short, and really help authors. Got lots to say? Submit a review to Flayrah, Dogpatch Press, or Claw & Quill.
What will you do this Furry Book Month? Please spread the word on social media using #FurryBookMonth!
This is very sad for everyone. There might be unusual headlines about it, but the social connection could happen with a group of workers, students or anyone else. Killing is against everything our little fan group is for. Thanks are due to the OC Register for telling the purpose in the bottom line, with a quote from a local member: “People come to us to get away from the negative stuff in life.”
This is a niche interest, so when something like this happens, it’s personal tragedy to us beyond just a news story to others. Many members have lost friends or have very close ties to those who did. Please send thoughts to them, and the surviving kids most of all.
I felt a little responsible for saying something, because of the way things started to happen when news started coming out. At first, it was just a call to locate a Missing Person (a fur) who was soon located. I tweeted that and got a high amount of views.
When more came out, I looked into it deeply to write a big story. I talked to people close to it, with personal knowledge that nobody else had. Some info came out that was directed to the police. Then I saw people local to the story asking for space. They asked for it to be kept as their story, given time to process, and handled by professionals and cops. That was when I decided this is beyond fan level. I removed all my tweets and passed on their message.
I think it really is the worst thing that ever happened with ties to this community. It’s not that unusual compared to other crimes that happen in cities, but I think it’s disproportionately big to a niche group. It might have to do with 2016’s explosion of interest and positive activity as well – things are just growing.
That wasn’t quite the end of it. The OC Register reporter had a lot of conversation with me due to my initial notice. They were puzzled about what furries are and what they do. Of course they already knew this was part of the story – that wouldn’t be overlooked. It made a dilemma – I thought that if tabloids were going to exploit this, maybe a real member should say something to real news.
So I sent the best info I could about the definition of “Furry” and referred the reporter to the same local person who I saw asking for space and respect. I thought he was already doing a good job of handling it. So when you see Bandit speaking in the piece, it’s not for attention, it’s because he was asked. Remember that he lost friends, like everyone else close to this story, and that’s the real deal.
There were a few missteps from the OC Register piece (nobody said anything about “sensitive” topics,) but Bandit seems to be getting many thank-you’s for doing a good job from local members. He mentioned turning down other interviews, and I think that’s a good idea. Say it once and let it go.
I have been checking around to see what comes out. I expect tabloids to try riding this, but most of the few I have seen so far seem pretty negligible, and I hope they get little mileage. They can say there’s weird stuff with misfit people, but nobody did a crime while participating in one of our activities. In the end it’s just between regular humans.
TL;DR: Was going to write a big report. Stopped to let locals and pros process. I think it’s beyond fan level. It’s awful and sad. There hasn’t been anything this bad in fandom before. Let it process and share good words to anyone who lost friends and family.
UPDATE 9/29/16:
Thank you to the OC Register and reporter Scott Schwebke for linking here. And thank you to Scott for being professional and sensitive, and doing good detective work. I believe that Scott’s reporting has helped to stop rumors and confusion. There was a screenshot of a supposed murder confession that was degraded enough that you could see it was shared hundreds or thousands of times, before it was posted out-of-context on some trashy tabloid blogs. Scott dug up the source and provided context that I think shows it could NOT have been a reasonable clue of real danger before the incident. Thank you to everyone in the community who stepped up to provide such info to aid police investigation. Everyone’s concern will help heal this incident to heal in time.
Do you know John Waters? He’s “the Pope of Trash” – a movie maker, author, performer and beloved icon of freaks everywhere. In the 1970’s, his no-budget, LSD-infused comedy took John and his cast into Midnight Movie superstardom and beyond. In 2013, at a stage show, I got him to talk about furries to the audience. My article about it mentioned giving him an invitation to San Francisco’s legendary Frolic fur dance.
This week, that got attention from another creative force, the organizers of Mortified. They were looking for help to invite John to a project. They reached out to Dogpatch Press and I was happy to hook them up with info. I wanted to help (with furry hugs on top) when I saw what they do:
“Mortified celebrates stories revealed through the strange and extraordinary things we created as kids.
Witness adults sharing their most embarrassing childhood artifacts (journals, letters, poems, lyrics, plays, home movies, art) with others, in order to reveal stories about their lives. Hear grown men and women confront their past with tales of their first kiss, first puff, worst prom, fights with mom, life at bible camp, worst hand job, best mall job, and reasons they deserved to marry Jon Bon Jovi.”
I’ll bet that might strike a chord with some furry fans. Do you have an old Livejournal you cringe about? RP chat logs? A horrible Durrsuit? A story about wanting to marry Robin Hood? Would you share some of it, if we promise to be nice about it or keep it anonymous if you ask?
The 2015 Cóyotl Awards, presented by the Furry Writers’ Guild for four categories of the Best Anthropomorphic Literature of the 2015 calendar year, were recently announced at a presentation ceremony at the Rocky Mountain Fur Con in Denver, Colorado.
Furry friends, I’m honored to share a special invitation to you from media producer Ben McShane. A professional studio is being offered for you to make YOUR video show. (Please be aware this is on site in Burbank, CA.)
Don’t overlook more cool books! Dogpatch Press’s own star guest poster, Fred Patten, has 
It’s another event from the WILD THINGS crew – producers of sexy, gutsy, creative happenings for boundary-breaking expression. There may be no other formal events in the world like this!
Best Novel