Many furries have had a chance to see this major source of fandom by now, so this isn’t your usual review. Here’s how I made it extra memorable with a holiday trip that I can’t wait to do again.
Peter S. Beagle created The Last Unicorn, made millions of fans happy, then got dragged through elder abuse and had to go to court to stop it.
In his 70’s, Peter was supposed to be making his magic and enjoying the golden years. Instead he had to spend years of battling his former manager, Connor Cochran, who was found liable for financial elder abuse, fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and defamation.
Before his disgrace, Cochran would sue critics for saying what he was doing, and wanted to shut me up that way. He failed when I sued him before Peter did. Peter issued a support statement during my legal battle for vindication, and I prevailed in 2019 with a judgement in my favor for $32,000. Peter sent me a signed Last Unicorn hardcover with a hand-written thank you for helping him.
Now Peter is back in control of his career. His official Beagleverse site has an FAQ about his battle with the court judgement showing the black-and-white truth.
But the Beagleverse site warns: “Unfortunately, there are still several websites controlled by Peter’s former manager. Beagleverse® is the best source for all things Peter S. Beagle.”
Peter doesn’t control a Last Unicorn Facebook page with an official check mark. It was made in 2008 before Peter sued Cochran, and is now being used to manipulate 182,000 followers.
2018 story The Diversity of the Latin American Furry Fandom is background for visiting Mexico’s largest furry con in October 2022.
Young Mexicans told me that Confuror has taken off to be their first full-fledged con and a beacon for fandom there. It succeeded after they only had meet-sized events that came and went, and wished for ones like North Americans have. The 2022 attendance surged after a first hotel con and then virtual cons for two years. There were 1,861 attendees, with 486 fursuiters at the fursuit festival. The charity auction raised 153,526 MXN (about $7,675 USD) to benefit a shark conservation NGO.
If you love bunnies, VOTE HERE for the Ursa Major Awards! From March 1-31, support furry creators.
I have to get something off my chest. I’ve never seen Space Jam. I’ll let others judge if it’s a “shoe commercial” and I’m not concerned about bunny bosoms. But this site honors all kinds of fans. If it stirs something in you, it’s worthy! Now the movie has an upcoming sequel and some talk about a redesigned Lola Bunny. It’s not just furries; there’s titters in the news from Entertainment Weekly to Newsweek.
Lola’s new design is “desexualized”, according to Space Jam: A New Legacy director Malcolm D. Lee.
“Lola was very sexualized” … “we reworked a lot of things, not only her look, like making sure she had an appropriate length on her shorts and was feminine without being objectified, but gave her a real voice. For us, it was, let’s ground her athletic prowess, her leadership skills, and make her as full a character as the others.”
For an interesting bit of story, Lola’s origin now includes Wonder Woman’s Amazonian homeland.
You might hear this is making debate or even complaints about PC culture run amok. I believe my friend’s comment that it’s “99% ironic” with people being nostalgic, or at most it’s making mountains out of molehills. But for your amusement, here’s one looney-tunes source.
The Ursa Major Awards are open for nominations! Check the Recommended Anthropomorphics list for stuff to consider.
(Part 1): You made it to 2021! — A look back at the Top 20 Furry News stories of last year.
Here’s more review of last year’s news from Dogpatch Press. These are highlights for this site, and they’re not listed by biggest or most-viewed, it’s a mixed bag of big stories plus inside stuff only a fandom knows.
(11) International animals — What’s life like for a teenage LGBT furry fan in Iran? and Meet Unid, the only known furry from Sri Lanka.
There’s so much going on outside North America. Furry scenes are coming up in Latin America and Southeast Asia. Art is common language for far-flung fans who’d never meet any other way. One in Iran thinks war should be about the best pizza. One in Sri Lanka dreams of coming to a furry con one day.
Via an author I follow.
I almost forgot my own report about Alan Dean Foster, the accomplished science fiction author who is being cheated by Disney.
It was buried by news about shows and movies with extra furry appeal. Irish animated feature WolfWalkers is just out for streaming. There are deaths to remember: Thomas “Tiny” Lister (voice actor in Zootopia) and Richard Corben (comics artist whose ROWLF was pitched for a furry feature by Hayao Miyazaki.) There’s announcements from Disney and Pixar — an animated TV series, and a feature of incredible furrybait.
Excited to see something once enjoyed by a niche community now getting more mainstream features. This year really was a big year for transformation media between Animal Crackers, BNA, Animorphs & Beast Boy graphic novel adaptions even a fursuit TF anime. Now this new Disney movie pic.twitter.com/KgqTmAtigR
— Choco Tarot & Flags ❂ FurFest (@TransformARTive) December 11, 2020
Welcome to Dutch furry guest writer Jack Newhorse.
Albert Heijn is the biggest supermarket chain in The Netherlands, a country of 17 million people in northwestern Europe. Its hamster mascot is often seen in video ads and in the weekly circular. And for those who don’t mind seeing a (toy) hamster being ripped to shreds, it’s even available as a squeaky dog toy.
The Dutch word for hoarding is hamstering (“hamsteren”): The mascots were created for promotions that encourage consumers to stock up. You don’t “squirrel it away” there, you hamster it away!
But the “AH” hamsters were forced back into their burrows when the wordplay that brought them to life became grim. As hoarding led to depleted shelves in the first weeks of COVID-19, the grocery’s “hamsterweken” (hamster week) sales seemed inappropriate. Within a few days, the hamsters were gone.
We’re back after Part 1 of the Q&A with Christopher Polt, PhD., from Boston College. His Twitter is full of art and animation history that welcomes furry fans.
Rate My Professor loves him.
(Dogpatch Press:) It was interesting that you mentioned teaching a course in talking animals. Tell me all about it! Since when, and how unique is that, and how is it being received? What sort of students are in it and what are they studying in general?
(Christopher Polt:) I love that course — the material is so fun and weird and meaningful. The basic question we ask is, “What are we doing when we speak by using animal voices, and what does that say about our attitudes towards humans, animals, and the lines we draw between them?” It’s also my chance to teach some cool, off-the-wall art and literature. We read Apuleius’ Golden Ass, which is a novel about a guy who accidentally turns himself into a donkey and goes on a journey through the Roman provinces (think The Emperor’s New Groove, but much sexier and more violent), and Nivardus’ Ysengrimus, which is the earliest major collection of stories about Reynard the fox, an archetypal animal trickster.
Sometimes I also take students on field trips to tie historical material we’re learning to lived experience. One of my favorites has been to a local pet cemetery. We spend a few days talking about how Greeks and Romans use animals to think about divinity, mortality, and the afterlife, and we look at epitaphs and funeral poems for dead pets, which are often written from the animal’s point of view. There’s a great example in the British Museum, which commemorates the life of a dog named Margarita (“Pearl” in Latin), who died while giving birth to puppies:
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1756-0101-1126
She talks about chasing other animals through the woods, how she used to nap on her humans’ laps and sleep in their bed, and how she barked a lot but never scared anyone. So after we read a range of things like that, we go to the pet cemetery and read modern grave markers, and we compare how people grieve for animals differently and what they choose to celebrate and memorialize about them. My favorite is this one for a cat named Useless:
