Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Category: Media

August 16, 2018

Queen of Arts, by Frances Pauli – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

Queen of Arts, by Frances Pauli.
Moses Lake, WA, Gastropod Press, February 2018, trade paperback, $8.99 (184 pages), Kindle $0.99.

This is purely a funny-animal soap-opera. It’s also a connected collection masquerading as a novel. “Queen of Arts” is on pages 1 to 132. “In the Margins” is pages 134 to 167. “Off the Record” is pages 168 to 182.

Waterville has two rival newspapers, the Arts Examiner and the Gazette. They compete for scoops and more, angling for contacts with the municipal government and Waterville’s social leaders. When the latter decide to hold a Waterville Festival of the Arts, including a city-wide art contest, and the Gazette pledges to sponsor its prizes, the Arts Examiner has to scramble to make up any lost ground.

Stella Rose, the Arts Examiner’s senior editor, is the protagonist. Stella is a cinnamon bear. Marge, a squirrel, is the assistant editor. Vanessa Lorne, a rabbit, is one of the Examiner’s reporters, along with Gerald, an ibex, and Buck, a zebra photographer. Others are Mr. Mort Growning (tapir), the paper’s manager and Stella’s boss; his secretary Francine Tsarong (snow leopard); Mayor Stimple (bison); Lydia Willard (black panther), an art gallery owner; Terrence Ortega (polar bear), another art gallery owner; and many more.

“‘There you are.’ Growning huffed and leaned to the side, out of the line of the mayor’s horns. His rubbery snout uncurled, dangling like a stub of hose below his piggy eyes. ‘Stella, at last.’

‘I’m five minutes early.’ She checked the clock on the far wall to be certain.

‘Fine. Yes.’ Growning waved a gesture of dismissal. ‘Feel free to continue, Mr. Mayor.’

‘We’ll rely on you for full coverage.’ The bison’s voice shook the door on its hinges. ‘I want a dedicated team for this.’

‘Exclusive coverage?’ The tapir’s trunk extended to its full length. Not exactly impressive, but enough to tell Stella his interest was piqued, focused on whatever the bison had proposed before she arrived.

‘Now, now.’ The mayor tugged at the front of his suit, and his two companions exchanged a look that told Stella they wouldn’t be getting an exclusive. ‘The Gazette has sponsored the awards. We have to allow them…’

‘You went to the Gazette first?’ Growning clutched at his heart with one hoofed paw. ‘To the Gazette? We’re the Arts Examiner. Arts. That rag only publishes a column on culture once a fortnight, not to mention some of the garbage they’ve printed about y–’

‘They came to us.’ The bison rumbled over the top of Growning’s tirade. ‘Almost the second we had the idea, in fact. We have to allow them coverage, but the Examiner has more space for arts columns. We came to you first.’” (pgs. 7-8)

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August 14, 2018

The Demon and the Fox, by Tim Susman – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

The Demon and the Fox, by Tim Susman. Illustrated by Laura Garabedian.
Dallas, TX, Argyll Productions, July 2018, trade paperback, $17.95 (277 pages), ebook $9.95.

The Demon and the Fox is subtitled “Book Two of The Calatians”. Book One, The Tower and the Fox, was published last year, and The War and the Fox, the concluding book of the trilogy, will be published next year.

Kip Penfold is a teenage fox-Calatian in a world analogous to New England in the early 1800s where the American Revolution failed in 1775. The Calatians are magically uplifted anthro animals, legally considered full humans but prejudiced against as inferior by most humans; at the bottom of society. (Along with women. And the Irish. Don’t ask about the Negroes or the Native Americans.)

There have never been any but White Caucasian (which doesn’t include the Irish) male sorcerers before, but an unexpected, almost fatal attack from an unknown enemy has forced Prince George’s College of Sorcery in New Cambridge, Massachusetts to open itself to a wider call for applicants to replace its murdered students – “any Colonist of magical inclination and ability may apply” – and Kip, along with an otter-Calatian, a woman, and an Irishman take advantage of it.

In my review of The Tower and the Fox, I said that “In a sense, this is a typical British schoolboy novel in a fantasy setting.  […] Despite the official call for applicants, there are those among both the college faculty and the other students who consider it disgraceful that non-Whites (including Irish), animals/Calatians, and women are allowed to become students. They are determined to make them fail. […] The Tower and the Fox covers the first semester of the College of Sorcery’s new class.”

The Demon and the Fox begins with the start of the second semester. All four have survived, and Kip is now the apprentice of Master Odden, one of the College’s full sorcerers and teachers. Their work, both for Kip’s learning and for the College’s defense, is to discover who was behind the magical attack on the College about six months ago that almost destroyed it.

The first sorcery Kip learns horrifies him, and almost breaks up the quartet:

“Kip’s indecision over whether to tell his friends about the calyx ritual lasted all of four minutes once they were again all together in the basement. ‘They drink the blood of Calatians!’ he said, pacing back and forth through the old papers and dusty stone floor.

Coppy, the otter-Calatian who’d also become an apprentice, didn’t react with the horror Kip had hoped. ‘I thought it might be something like that,’ he said.

‘You never said. We talked about it for months!’

‘I know.’ Coppy rested a paw on Kip’s arm. ‘Didn’t want to upset you. People do horrible things to Calatians in London and I heard summat about blood when I was a cub there.’

Kip’s tail lashed back and forth. ‘I wish you’d told me.’

‘I couldn’t.’ Coppy squeezed his forearm. ‘It was your dad. If he wouldn’t tell you, ‘twasn’t my place.’

‘You don’t have to protect me all the time,’ Kip said.

The otter lifted his paw and rubbed at his whiskers. ‘But I really didn’t know for sure. Why start trouble with rumours?’” (p. 13)

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August 13, 2018

Interview with Adler the Eagle, who helps you smile with furry animation.

by Patch O'Furr

Adler caught my eye with his animation. It got a lot of sharing on Twitter and helped him build a following of 6K+ (and rising fast) because of how fun it is. Thanks to Adler for taking time for this interview. (If you like this, you might also like How furry animator Jib Kodi found his art or the interview series with many other furries.) – Patch 

Patch O’Furr:

Hi Adler! I really love your vids you have been posting, and your fursona is super memorable. That’s why I got in touch. There’s tons of furs who have cute suits, but it’s easy to lean on the suit or just one talent like good dancing. I like how you round things out like a multi dimensional character who has good stories to tell. The voice acting and performance timing are big ingredients to make things so rad and fun. You kind of remind me of a mascot who hasn’t had a cereal made just for you yet.

If someone made a cereal just for Adler what kind would it be?

Adler Eagle:

Wheat based with little hard sugar bits mixed in. Probably Called Eagle Bites. They would be good, wholesome, and contain low amount of sugar, but a high amount of family fun and value.

Patch O’Furr:

I get the idea you’re into professional animation, maybe with a few years of experience prior to doing furry stuff. And is there any pro performing experience there too? Read the rest of this entry »

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August 8, 2018

Wat ‘n Wolhaarstorie! – A South African Article on Furries – and a radio show.

by Duncan R. Piasecki

Submitted by guest Duncan R. Piasecki – don’t miss his articles The Forgotten History of the Furry Musical – and Talking Animal Films In South Africa (Part 1) and (Part 2.)

As some of you might know, South Afrifur happened quite recently, the biggest one yet. Unusually for furries from this part of the world, however, was the media coverage: the convention was featured in an article in the Afrikaans magazine Huisgenoot, in their July 26th issue. Of course, being Afrikaans (quite an obscure language outside of this country) means the readership potential is limited internationally, but it’s a pretty big deal for local furries: the magazine is one of the most popular in the country.

So, for all the international furries out there, I present to you a reproduction of the print article, and then my own translation. Please keep in mind that Afrikaans and I don’t agree (it was my worst subject in high school), I’m very far from fluent in it, so this was done with Google Translate, a dictionary, and my own extrapolation. The results might not be exactly accurate, but I feel they give the general idea if not the exact translation. As you will see, some things just don’t cross-translate.

But first, a new development: furries on the radio.

A couple of the people covered in the Afrikaans article went on to one of Pretoria’s biggest radio stations to talk about being a furry (it sounded like it was because of the article, in fact), and I thought the interview went quite well (if ticking off a few of the usual boxes of annoying “but it’s a fetish, right?” questions the media loves to ask). Quite weird, this sudden boost in interest, considering everyone’s ignored this community in this country before now.

Article: https://www.jacarandafm.com/shows/scenic-drive-rian/furries-take-over-scenic-drive/

Videos of the interview:

I ripped an audio recording of the whole interview. It comes to about 24 minutes and has quite a bit more than the videos (a lot is not in English). It can be found here: https://archive.org/details/jacaranda-fm-furries

Tweets:

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August 6, 2018

Dwale’s critical review of “Red Engines”: When furry fiction becomes islamophobic propaganda

by Patch O'Furr

Dwale is a member of the Furry Writers Guild whose story “Behesht” won a 2017 Coyotl award. Follow them on Twitter. Thanks to Dwale for this guest post! Here’s a few previous articles about the anthology. – Patch.

Dwale continues – and see an update from Furplanet at end.

Disclosure: I have a story in this anthology. This analysis will contain spoilers.

I’ve been making my way through “Dogs of War II: Aftermath”, edited by Fred Patten and have now almost finished. I had thus far thought it more or less innocuous. Then I read the second to last story.

I’m not going to beat around the bush: I found “Red Engines” to be an offensive, even dangerous work of fiction. It is a nakedly Islamophobic diatribe, the publishing of which, while not surprising given today’s political climate, is saddening.

The story is told from the point of view of an AI-controlled robotic bird who calls himself Hughin. Hughin comes to an unnamed village in an unnamed part of the Muslim world; desert country (these kinds of stories never take place where the land is green).  He sees the dust trails of an approaching army identified as the “Allies.” He perches on “the town minaret” (I guess this is a one-mosque town?), then flies down to a school.

At the school, he meets Aisha, a young girl, and asks her if there are other children present. She takes him inside where he meets and questions the others, recording their answers. Hughin, you see, comes from an island of artificial intelligences and has been told to collect as much data as he can from these kids before they are killed. The reason he does this is to preserve them in some fashion. He is not part of the conflict, we are told, he is supposed to be a neutral observer.

From this information, Hughin constructs within himself what he calls a “djinn,” a virtual representation of what he has learned from the children. Throughout the remainder of the story, this “djinn” spouts off phrases such as “Eat the Jews!” And while Hughin admits that this pseudo-mind is a “nasty parody,” the reader is never really offered much of a counterpoint.

They hear an explosion nearby, and when the children ask who is attacking, Hughin says, “The allies.” He thinks to himself, but does not say, “and you’re all going to die.” This makes clear that the coming battle is not a surgical strike. It is to be a wholesale massacre.

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August 2, 2018

Furry Awakenings

by Patch O'Furr

Where do furries come from? Here’s how ones who answered were zapped. Below: A picture is worth 1000 words. Classics & nostalgia (blame the 80’s!) Born This Way. Self Discovery and forbidden curiosity. A community or even family, and a fascinating hobby. – Patch

A picture is worth 1000 words

Classics & nostalgia

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July 26, 2018

Liberation Game, by Kris Schnee – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

Liberation Game, by Kris Schnee.
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, May 2018, trade paperback, $8.99 (307 pages). Kindle $3.99.

This is both a sequel to Thousand Tales: How We Won the Game, 2040: Reconnection, The Digital Coyote, Thousand Tales: Learning to Fly, and all the other stories in this series, and an independent summation of all of them. It covers the years 2036 to 2040, from when the Artificial Intelligence Ludo was just starting to set up the Thousand Tales/Talespace gameworld, to when it – maybe – becomes a legally recognized independent country. It features new characters, although some previous characters appear in it. (Nocturne, identified in the first novel as a black-feathered griffin-girl, is described more fully; she’s not an eagle-lioness combination but a raven-lioness.)

Liberation Game features three main characters: Ludo, in “her” beautiful human woman form; Robin MacAdam, a young American, a member of the Latter Day Saints/Mormons helping to build a community in the Central American nation of Cibola; and Lumina, a centauroid deer robot (very shiny but metallic; not very “furry”).

As Liberation Game begins in 2036, Ludo has just begun her mission to help humans “have fun”. Lumina is one of the first independent AIs that Ludo has created. She was intended to become the android companion of a German doctor who Ludo hoped to encourage to become a supporter of Thousand Tales and one of its first uploaded residents, but he is killed almost immediately, leaving Lumina at loose ends. She drifts over to Robin’s project.

Robin, the assistant of Edward Apery, are the two Mormons/Americans helping the local natives of Cibola to construct a modern village, Golden Goose. The name is intended as both a symbol of what they hope to accomplish, and as a subtle hint to Cibola’s corrupt government that it can get more over the long run by letting the experimental village succeed than by taking all its assets as “taxes” immediately.

“The village of Golden Goose existed by a strange partnership. The Latter-Day Saints (or Mormons) had pumped money into Cibola in the hopes of winning over some of the local Catholics. The government had eagerly deeded them some land to start economic reconstruction. Robin himself had initially cared more about travel and adventure and damn good local coffee.

The village’s other partner wasn’t human: Ludo the gamemaster AI.” (p. 5)

At this point, Ludo is mostly a silent partner, helping to subsidize Golden Goose’s development for the long-range goal of building one of her centers of Thousand Tales and uploading human minds into Talespace. Edward/administrator and Robin/engineer are the tutors of the local natives, and their representatives to Governor Leopold, their Cibolan government official.

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July 25, 2018

Bearly Fiction, Volume One, by Frances Pauli – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

Bearly Fiction, Volume One, by Frances Pauli.
Moses Lake, WA, Gastropod Press, May 2018, trade paperback, $5.99 ([2 +] 114 [+ 1] pages), Kindle $0.99.

The subtitle says “a collection of anthropomorphic stories by Frances Pauli”. The back-cover blurb begins, “Eleven animal stories from author Frances Pauli. From dogs to dinosaurs, from the courtroom to the coral reef, follow these critter characters through a wild variety of adventures across genres.”

In her Introduction, Pauli says that these are all reprints, so you may have read some of these before, in several anthologies of furry fiction. They’re still good, and it’s nice to have them all together. Also, this is a thin but tall book, 7.5” x 9.2” – that’s almost as large as a standard sheet of paper. Considering the low price, you certainly get your money’s worth.

Bad Dog – Hellhounds are born at the witching hour exactly. Hatach is born thirty-five seconds after the witching hour. How will this affect his being a hellhound?

Rats – “A rat walked into a bar.” But he says that he isn’t a rat. Or he wasn’t, anyway. The bartender tries to help him figure out why he turned into an anthro rat.

A Temper for Order – “Piper’s beak tipped the bottle with expert care. The liquid oozed through the narrow spout. Not a drop spilled. One of her feet clutched a smaller, hand-blown phial. She needed twenty drops more to get the mix just right. Twenty drops exactly. Balanced on one long leg, the little hen slicked her feathers closer to her body and counted while she poured,” (p. 14) Piper mixes herbal medicines in an avian beachfront community. Her friend Trudy, a weaver, is determined to play matchmaker for her. But Piper is obsessed with neatness, and the cock that Trudy seems determined to match her with is Dash, a seemingly-staggeringly-drunken stork. Is there more to Dash than is apparent?

El Emperador – Jessie is looking to buy a fast horse. The one the horse trader calls El Emperador looks like a broken-down fleabag. But Jessie is desperate, so she buys him and renames him Harry. How can she get the Emperor/Harry to run?

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July 24, 2018

Riders of the Realm. 1, Across the Dark Water, by Jennifer Lynn Alvarez – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

Riders of the Realm. 1, Across the Dark Water, by Jennifer Lynn Alvarez. Illustrations, maps by David McClellan
NYC, HarperCollinsPublishers/Harper, May 2018, hardcover, $16.99 ([xix +] 417 [+4] pages), Kindle $9.99.

Alvarez’s Riders of the Realm trilogy is a followup to her The Guardian Herd tetralogy. The four Young Adult Guardian Herd novels (Starfire, Stormbound, Landfall, and Windborn, published from September 2014 to September 2016) featured the intelligent, talking pegasi (flying horses, despite the FAQ that “being called a ‘horse’ is an insult to a pegasus”) to the west of the giant continent Anok. More exactly, it featured the five herds there of those pegasi (the Sun Herd, Mountain Herd, Snow Herd, Jungle Herd, and Desert Herd), and the two all-powerful black stallion pegasi, Starfire and Nightwing, fighting to the death for their fate.

Riders of the Realm is about the 140 pegasi from those five herds, led by the mare Echofrost and the stallion Hazelwind, who flee Anok altogether for the unknown southern continent across the Dark Water ocean, and what they find there. They declare themselves a new Herd; Storm Herd. Or rather, since their story takes second place, it’s about the civilization there of the two-legged Landwalkers (humans), their enemies like Gorlan giants, spit-dragons, giant ants, burners (miniature flying, fire-breathing dragons), and other creatures – notably, the pegasi that they have already domesticated – and how they are affected by the arrival of the 140 flying-horse refugees from Anok.

Across the Dark Water is two stories: that of 12-year-old human Rahkki, small for his age, the younger brother of Brauk Stormrunner, one of the officers of the Fifth Clan’s Sky Guard; and of Echofrost, a “sleek silver mare with a mix of dark- and light-purple feathers, white mane and tail, one white sock” (p. x). But it’s mostly about Rahkki and the politics of the Sandwen’s Fifth Clan – about the humans.

The first chapter introduces Rahkki, his adult (21 years old) brother Brauk, and Brauk’s Khilari flyer, Kol:

“Overhead, glittering feathers, shining hides, and polished armor blocked out the sun – it was his brother’s squad of Riders, flying back from patrol. Eighty winged horses, each ridden by a Sandwen warrior, glided in formation, their hooves striking the clouds. There were a total of three squads in the Fifth Clan’s Sky Guard, and Brauk Stormrunner was the Headwind of his. The flying steeds were called Khilari, which meant ‘Children of the Wind,’ and they were sacred in the Sandwen Realm.” (pgs. 2-3)

Across the Dark Water is complex; about the political structure and politics of the Sandwen’s Fifth Clan (of seven clans); about the Sandwen’s relationship with the other species of this southern continent; and about these other species. Riders of the Realm is admirably different from the four novels of The Guardian Herd in that it is about flying horses and humans and how they interact, rather than just about flying horses as was the previous tetralogy, but of less interest to furry fans in that there is so much about humans and not the anthro animals.

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July 20, 2018

Tomori’s Legacy, by Beryll and Osiris Brackhaus – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

Tomori’s Legacy, by Beryll and Osiris Brackhaus.
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, May 2018, trade paperback, $15.99 (165 pages), Kindle $4.99.

Tomori’s Legacy is the Brackhaus’ Packmasters #3. I reviewed #1, The Relics of Thiala, and #2, Raid on Sullin, favorably. This #3 is the shortest, but it’s no less rip-roaring, space-opera fun. The cover, again by Darbaras (Dávid László Tóth), features Cat, the series’ narrator.

The Packmasters series is set in a far-future interstellar community. Cat (the narrator), Ferret, Bear, and Wolf are four bestiae, bioengineered anthro-animen in hiding, led by Ana, a young human with semi-suppressed Packmaster powers. The bestiae are considered beneath contempt by most humans, and were enslaved by an arrogant cult called the Packmasters who used them to try to conquer the galaxy. The Packmasters were apparently all killed by the rest of humanity in a bloody civil war a generation ago, and the bestiae were all slaughtered except for a few that powerful humans kept as pets. Ana, a mistreated adopted orphan now in her early twenties, escapes with the help of Cat. They gather three other bestiae and discover that Ana has Packmaster powers; but instead of her using them to dominate the others, they form a pack of friends with a telempathetic bond under Ana’s leadership, Cat’s guidance, Bear’s piloting, and Wolf’s muscle (plus the mostly-childlike Ferret). They steal a luxury space yacht, the Lollipop, belonging to a corrupt human Senator, Viscount Tomori, and flee to Vandal, a distant space station towards the Fringe of the galaxy that is (what else?) “a wretched hive of scum and villainy”. But Tomori comes after them. The Relics of Thiala ends with Tomori and Bear dead. In Raid on Sullin, the remaining four form a tighter family, Bear is replaced as pilot by Ferret, and they are joined by Ten, a battle-hardened gazelle who is no less deadly for being a herbivore.

To quote the beginning of the blurb for Tomori’s Legacy, “Viscount Tomori is long dead, but his affairs just don’t want to rest in peace.
[…] Now Ana and her pack are part of the power struggle among the crime lords of the Rim, and have to return to Darkside before things get out of hand.”

The climax of The Relics of Thiala is the bestiae and Ana stealing Viscount Tomori’s space yacht and fleeing to Vandal, a criminally-owned space station; Tomori’s coming after them; and the fight in which he and Bear are killed. Raid on Sullin begins with the authorities of Vandal ruling that they acted in legitimate self-defense, and “to the victor belongs the spoils”. Ana, Cat, Ferret, and Wolf are the new owners of the Lollipop. They are immediately sidetracked into the adventure of Raid on Sullin.

Tomori’s Legacy begins with their return (with Ten, the gazelle) to Vandal, where they are stunned to learn that they weren’t given only the Lollipop. They are the new owners of all Tomori’s property. Since he had run his clan as his personal possession, they now own his criminal businesses, including a shitload of thugs and schemers who each want to take over and become the new boss of Clan Tomori.

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