Of course this happened in San Francisco – “Furry Mecca”. (Sorry, Pittsburgh… you can borrow that title for one weekend a year, but you have to give it back.)
Andrew WK’s Pizza Party was planned for July 3. Furries called up the venue, 1015 Folsom, and arranged to be part of the show. The show managers went out of their way to accommodate fursuiters and help them change. There was a strong turnout for such an awesome happening.
Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag. Guest posts welcome. “Local correspondents” wanted to talk about your local networks.
This week’s Newsdump: Everything Anthrocon! There was SO MUCH of this news, and it was such a busy month, that I will be playing catch-up for a while with it… I’m not able to read all of these links. Good job catching all this attention, AC! Has there ever been this much? Some of it is national (the Onion A.V. Club and NPR notice seems particularly cool.) It was quite a coup to parade outside on the Pittsburgh street for the first time. 5,000 regular public watchers came out to see the furries, and they went nuts for it. I hope the crowd doubles in the future. I’d love to interview Uncle Kage about the planning and reception. (Official Anthrocon wrapup report.)
The official count of members in the Anthrocon 2015 Fursuit Parade Group Photo is 1,460. This reminded me of a neat aspect of the con. All that show value! These costumes represent so much investment… we could do a few estimates to figure out how much. In a previous post, “$3 million sale raises furry auction topic”, I came up with an arbitrary $2,320.51 per fursuit represented in Anthrocon’s parade. Multiply by the count of 1,460 members this year to reach a (rough guesstimate) value of $3,387,944.60 in fursuits.
New Orleans is a renowned party town. In the French Quarter, on Bourbon Street, you can get potent drinks like a Hand Grenade or a Resurrection in to-go cups, and walk around the neighborhood as boldly as you dare. A walk into some of the restaurants can make you sneeze, because the crawfish boils have so much seasoning, that it pervades the air like a whiff of pepper spray at a crime scene. Signs on murkier streets warn you to walk with friends, and be vigilant. Petty crime seems taken for granted in a place scarred by hurricane Katrina a decade ago. People party to forget woes or live life to the fullest with reminders of mortality all around. (At least that’s an excuse for barfing out the door of a taxi.) There’s many stories about long ago lives held in above-ground mausoleums of famous cemetaries. A tour is a nice calm way to walk off too many drinks, even if guides will tell you any kind of silly ghost story for tourist bucks.
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.
Gay marriage just became legal across the USA. Even if you have no plan to get one, it’s a big deal. People of a few generations ago thought we’d have flying cars before this happened. The writer of “Furry Force” says:
It was already going to be one whopper of a party. But with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry fresh off the presses, Sunday’s Pride Parade in San Francisco became a rainbow-colored, joyous celebration for the ages.
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.
I feel like complaining, and I’m not sure who to complain to.
It’s about the review of the recent FurCon in Science Fiction/SanFrancisco #161, (PDF), Spring 2015, “Furries in the Fog: Further Confusion 2015” by Christopher Erickson, reprinted in the DP newsdump of April 16. It’s a typical review today of a furry convention for the general public, both accurate and highly favorable. But Erickson said, “I was also able to see all of the dealer room. There was a lot for sale. There were numerous artists to choose from. There were also dealers selling ears and tails. There was a stand with puppets. One stand was selling custom collar tags and license plate covers. Others were selling artisan crafted soaps and lotions. I purchased a few pieces of badge art from one dealer that featured various fandoms.”
Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag. Tips are always welcome.
Zootopia: Disney goes full furry, and this stuff is going to explode in 2016.
How excited are you for the next furriest movie ever? “Anthropomorphic” isn’t quite an everyday household word, and it’s use in this trailer spells out an open secret. Before they made this, they did market research up the wazoo about us. Of course, it’s still a regular Disney movie, but they KNOW.
I watched the trailer when it had less than 300 views – while I write it’s over 1,300,000. The first comments on it said “furries”, and a lot of the top comments on it still say “furries”. There’s no way they didn’t anticipate that.
My reaction: Furry is the opposite of exclusive to me, but this cool thing makes me fear a deluge of commercially shallow influence. I’m scared, hold me! … NAHH, it will be awesome. I can’t wait for the day this movie comes out, with all the fursuit meets there will be to see it. Fan participation is a big deal. I’ll bet we’ll see tons of actual furries on the news because of this.
Queerty‘s article about sex at Califur has important message between the lines. (Via Greenreaper:)Read the rest of this entry »
— Kurst in State of Yote (@hyperyote) June 4, 2015
“Call of the wild: Local Furries say they are misunderstood.”
A Minnesota newspaper has a standard-issue “meet the furries” article. The last Newsdump (5/28/15) reported that MNFurs have been growing with an active community, a registered nonprofit, and a new convention (Furry Migration.) Their activity caught the notice of their local newspaper, and reporters went to their picnic. The article includes these standard features: 1) All-fursuiter gallery 2) Apologetic sex denial 3) Weirdos aren’t so bad! We see it over and over, but it was very well received, and it’s OK if the news readers haven’t seen it before. There’s also a wedding, frisbee and hugs… The more of that, the better. MNfurs discuss the article on their forum.
International mascot Trip E. Collie goes to France.
An April Newsdump shared Trip’s surprising experience of seeing his fursuit photo advertising a large international festival in France. Trip went there to meet the organizers, and possibly sit down with them for a bowl of kibble. Good boy!
