Demand from devoted fans is bringing back the Swat Kats TV series for the first time in 20 years. Fandom kept the show alive since it was canceled in 1994 with only two seasons. If you missed it, here’s the lowdown from Swatkats.info:
“Furry Pride” is redundant when you’re a talking animal. There’s no way you can’t strut your stuff, turn heads and light up a crowd with smiles. But when furries AT Pride join other groups with a bigger mission, it puts the magic where it most belongs – in a fabulous show – and makes a good cause better.
“Silicon Valley Pride has reached out to me as they would love to have fursuiters at the pride festival, August 30th. They will have a changing tent available, and can offer free admission for suiters that RSVP in advance.
The other person who they reached out to, who’s coordinating things right now, is Lani B. She’s pretty active in the South Bay cosplay scene, and they’ve reached out to her to get cosplayers to go as well. (Anime/comic type costuming stuff). Her email is dynamiccosplaycouple@gmail.com and she’s on facebook here.
The San Francisco Pride parade may be the premiere event for LGBT culture. It’s popular among the SF Bay Area Furries, so in 2015, their show-stealing presence in front of a million viewers made a standout event for the whole furry subculture. But it was far from the only one. (Expect a chat soon with Uncle Kage, about Anthrocon’s awesome accomplishments in 2015.) In fact, theirs wasn’t even the only Furry statement at Pride events around the world. Competition came from an unexpected place – Knoxville, Tennessee. Read the rest of this entry »
Bojack Horseman renewed for 2016 – anyone want to interview the creator?
Just renewed for a third season… and read a great interview with the creator about the recent second season. A while back, I got an invite from the creator to do an interview! Would anyone who’s caught up with the series like to take charge of it for a guest post? (Raphael Bob-Waksberg says:)
…early on we decided that all the animals are animal-people. No one has pets. There’s no little birds flying from tree to tree — it’s a world full of Goofys, not Plutos, to use a Disney analogy. In season one I was really hesitant to depict meat-eating in any way. But then someone pitched a joke with a cow waitress serving steak and being really offended.
Swat Kats ask crowd funders to aid renewal.
(Tip from David P:) “The team that made the original Swat Kats just launched a kickstarter to bring them back.”
Colonel Sanders dressed as a Furry at Comic Con.
(Tip from Fred Patten:) “Dear Patch; Note the Col. Sanders statue at Comic-Con dressed as a furry. This indicates that furries have become as pop-culture respectable as vampires, werewolves, Martians, and anime characters.”
Pittsburgh has always been a welcoming, accepting city for this fandom, and here’s to hoping it continues for this year’s Anthrocon. If you happen to see one of these NORMAL people in incredible costumes walking the streets of Pittsburgh, don’t be afraid to say hello.
Ad campaign with “Furries” ad found in copywriter’s portfolio.
A few months ago, this article got thousands of views – Mainstream advertising: “More and more, Furries are being hinted at in marketing media!” One of the ads for Mini in San Francisco had a provocative mention of Pride month and Furries. I didn’t know much of the context, until I found the entire campaign with brief comment from the writer . Many ads are in it, but he uses the Furries one as cover image. He captioned it: “Staying current on local events is key to showcasing our understanding of SF.” It would have been amusing to hear the copywriter’s pitch. I sent a few questions about the reaction, but sadly he didn’t reply. It’s good to know that furries have street cred.
Nasty little mockery of “furries” on Orange Is The New Black TV show.
We here love what you guys post online and what your content does for the fandom, so we hope you’ll take some time to check out what we’re doing!
Where does the love of anthropomorphics come from? How far back can we dig in history and mass media to really get to the bottom of it? Why does every culture across the face of the earth have a fascination with animal-people?
Arrkay got me excited to know more. The show summaries are gold… (everything I’d love to expose here.) Let him explain it in his words:
An all new Furry YouTube show has come on the scene: Culturally F’d.
Culturally F’d explores the furries of the past and present, climbing the ladder of history through mass media in all the different ways humans have blended the properties of man and animal, and why. From Cave Paintings to Comic Books, and everything in between. Culturally F’d is an exploration of what makes everyone just a little bit furry, and what makes furries especially furry.
In November 2014, I shared news about the very active Furry author Tempe O’kun. Public Radio interviewed him about his writing – and they treated Furry writing as just a genre, not a “weird news” item. Even the romance kind! That was refreshing, and I thought he did a great job representing it. So do other furries, it seems, because he’s been honored as an award winning Furry Writers’ Guild member and a convention guest of honor.
Tempe got in touch to share exclusive news about upcoming projects. His novel Windfall sounds like a unique genre-mixing delight, with cute furry romance and paranormal horror. There’s also art from the Nordguard card game below. They’re coming out at Anthrocon 2015. If you can’t wait to see them in person on July 9-13, here’s a taste. I asked Tempe to round out his news with personal chat about how his year has been – and if he had stories about making projects happen. I asked: “Are you excited for Anthrocon, and what else do you plan to do there?”
Tempe responds:
My year has been great thus far! I was guest of honor at Camp Feral 2014, and I have been invited to GoH another con in the spring.
ThinkTank Games and I started work on what would become Nordguard: Tribes of the White Land expansion before the game’s core set even came out. Originally, we’d planned it as a series of smaller expansions (about the size of Magic booster packs), but eventually took the most interesting elements from each set and combined them into a 36-card pack. It shuffles directly into the main set and, just like the original, it’s a boxed set—no buying multiple packs to get the cards you want, like in a CCG. The highlights include two canon characters (Iyoto and Manny) who were mentioned in the first book, but haven’t been seen yet. It also has Team Fortress 2-style side-grades for every character. BlackTeagan also developed an entire new tribe—the Nituuyik, arctic lynxes—for the expansion, who will later appear in the books. So this is the first time the card game will have a direct influence on the graphic novels!
We’re also reprinting the core set. We’ve gotten some great feedback over the last two years and we’re pretty confident about the streamlining we’ve done for the second edition.
Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag. Tips are always welcome.
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Media and Fandom News
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The Animation Show of Shows: There’s no better source for artistic animation, and they need support.
This touring show presents the best of the best in the world of short films, by the most talented directors. It’s ordinarily only seen by invite at top movie studios (your Pixars and so forth), and at colleges, with special public access to those who hear through word of mouth. You may not have heard of it, because it’s been a personal project funded by one amazing guy, Ron. (He also runs Acme Filmworks, who directed a good couch gag for The Simpsons.)
I don’t ordinarily post crowd funding (too much to cover!) Leave that to awesome Furry journalist Corbeau at Furstarter. (We need more “furry news” specialists.) This is just an exceptional cause. If you like animation, don’t miss it.
Through this show, I discovered the hilarious short, Flamingo Pride. It shows what happens to the only heterosexual flamingo at the birds celebration. It’s almost as fabulous as the San Francisco Bay Furries will be this weekend, in the SF Pride parade.
It was an incredible rush to march with dozens of fursuiters in the 2014 San Francisco Pride parade. It was a good cause, but besides any message, the parade was full of music and cheering that made it pure fun. On ordinary days, it was a main route of the city full of buses and cars, but that day it was blocked off to make a stage a mile and a half long, with crowds on BOTH sides. It’s rare to get such audience (over a million) for jumping around and being furry. The hot sun made me ease up to shady parts of the barrier, and ask watchers if they could spare a dog bowl of beer.
2014 was the first time the Bay Area Furries returned to march since 2005. Excitement is building for the 2015 parade, on June 28. There are 50% more RSVP’s than last year. Friends and lurkers will probably increase it too, with likely attendance of over 70. Everyone is expecting another amazing event.
A valued regular commenter gave skepticism about the idea of “furry pride”, because it’s just liking something, not an achievement. I responded that it’s just one of many social groups supporting Pride (capital P), not a parade representing furries.
Here’s more info courtesy of the group organizers. It’s script info that goes to TV announcers, to help them figure out what they’re looking at. The parade requests one from every group.
On June 28, San Francisco Pride is going to be awesome for furries!
The Bay Area Furries are all ready to march in the parade. Pride is the height of street fair season in “Furry Mecca”. It’s one of the most loved activities for an active section of the community. 2014 was the first Furry appearance in the parade since 2005. They had attendance of 50+, and TV coverage with a million-strong audience. RSVP’s are 25% stronger than last year, with days left to grow. Two leaders got the event organized, despite unavailability of an important third from last year.
Califur visited by television naturalist Figgy Dobbs.
Last year was their inaugural event. It snuck in under the radar of many. About 200 furries showed up for low-key fun. Fine-tuning of publicity and planning has brought great pawgress. PAWcon is following in the pawprints of the other well-established Furry con in San Jose, Further Confusion.(How many places are lucky enough to get two great cons?) Now they’re stepping up to stage it at Fur Con’s original venue, the Doubletree. Many people have missed the unique magic of that venue after outgrowing it. Those who remember (or missed it) can have it again!
Whoa, hang on. @pacanthro is at the San Jose Double Tree? Are you effing joking me?! 😀
