Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Category: On the scene

September 7, 2015

Most Embarrassing Google Search, and Furries on Seeker Network – NEWSDUMP (9/7/15)

by Patch O'Furr

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.  Guest posts welcome. Tips: patch.ofurr@gmail.com. 

SFGate looked at a map of the “most embarrassing Google searches” in the USA and found me.

(Appeared in photo #9.)  “Furries” is supposedly searched a lot in Wyoming. The map also shows who searched for: Bronies, Nickelback Lyrics, Dog Clothes, Meth Recipe… Who knows if it’s really real data, but you can tell they had fun.  But not as much as I did in the pic. Sorry guys, not embarassed in the slightest!

Playwright fictionalizes the 2014 MWFF chlorine attack, for a story exploring identity.

“The sixth Chicago Fringe Festival, opening tonight, brings zombies, victims, and furries to town.”  Here’s the festival page dedicated to the play.  I confess I only had a minute to look into this and the play’s Indiegogo page. I have a rule – I assume that any “furry” story that uses cheap halloween costumes is probably bad storytelling. Misinformed exploitation pieces often aim for humor at our expense, and they fail because they lack authenticity. Well, in this case, I may be proven wrong.  I think this festival is prestigious, and: ‘He’s worked to keep it balanced—”not other-ing the community”‘ – says Corbeau at Furstarter.  (It’s so great to have more than one eye on this stuff – please furries, make more blogs!)

Furry Migration gets a nice feature.

“…Where being weird is a good thing.”  The article’s just a standard introduction, but the video lets several fursuiters speak and dance in a charming way.

Furries at Bubonicon in New Mexico.

A nice exploration by a columnist who investigates the con and meets a lot of different sci fi fan characters, including a few extra fuzzy ones.

A film maker was commissioned to make a documentary for Seeker network- and he started at reddit’s r/furry.

In March 2015, Discovery launched a new network, Seeker. Their programming goes for the mysterious and wonderful fringes of nature and culture.  Now that means Furries.  Their piece is called “Furries Aren’t As Weird As You Think.”

Here was the film maker’s overture to the community on reddit.  Seeker posted it, and then the film maker came back to ask what we think. Getting a well-made, paid for documentary seems yet another sign of rising subculture. Don’t mind the one mistake of the title.

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September 3, 2015

Camp Feral!: Fifteen Years, 1998 – 2012 (Part 2) – by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Article with Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.  Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

“Camp Feral! An all-inclusive furry summer camp where the registration fee covers your food, lodging and activities for the most unique and memorable furry experience of your life! Your fee covers all the coffee you can drink, [and] all the breakfast lunch or dinner you can eat.” (from the Camp Feral! 2012 website)

Camp Feral! is the oldest of the recorded outdoor furry conventions, going back to 1998. It is also Canada’s oldest furry event, and the fourth oldest continuing furry convention (after EuroFurence in 1995 and Anthrocon and Mephit FurMeet in 1997). It was started after the oldest furry annual convention, ConFurence in Southern California (1989), gave rise to U.S. East Coast furry conventions in 1995 to 1997 (Furtasticon, Confurence East, Albany Anthrocon), inspiring Canadian furry fans to start their own convention – but with a difference.

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Camp Feral!:  Fifteen Years, 1998 – 2012, Part 2

“The park had brought in a naturalist to lead a Wolf Howl.  Apparently this is a regular event in Algonquin Park.  First there was a very informative slide show and presentation, then the naturalist took us outside and tried to get the wolves to howl.  What he does is that he howls three times, then waits to see if the wolves respond.  If after a few rounds they do not, then several naturalists howl together as though it was a pack howling, sometimes that will get the wolves to howl back. Unfortunately, on this night they didn’t howl.  Might have been the rain. I could imagine them sheltering themselves from the rain and laughing at the stupid humans out getting soaked and howling.

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August 11, 2015

Silicon Valley Pride invites furs – Fangcon makes history with Pride parade sponsorship.

by Patch O'Furr

“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.

Furries invited for August 30, 2015:

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Tip from Neonbunny, builder of influential events like Frolic:

“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.

This is the link for the pride event, and Lani has also created a facebook page to get cosplayers motivated to go (and hopefully fursuiters as well.) If anyone is interested in coordinating fursuiters for this, please get in touch!” – NeonBunny

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 »

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August 3, 2015

Colonel Sanders is a Furry, more Bojack Horseman for 2016. NEWSDUMP (8/3/15)

by Patch O'Furr

Tips: patch.ofurr@gmail.com. 

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.  Guest posts welcome. “Local correspondents” wanted to talk about your local networks. 

Injured furry fan who faced 90% odds against him is recovering.

Here’s a good fan item to start… Alex is a Furry fan who was severely injured in an explosion in Taiwan last month.  He had 90% chance of dying from the injuries. The latest update says he’s doing very well in recovery. It’s still a heck of a scary situation so he can use any help you can give.

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Pop Culture and Further Fun.

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For no reason at all, click for a pinup of Mr. Peanutbutter's fabulous ass, which doesn't actually appear in the series.

Click for Mr. Peanutbutter’s fabulous ass, just because.

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.”

KFC-Cosplaying-Colonels

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July 28, 2015

Fursuiters were kings at Andrew WK’s Pizza Party in San Francisco.

by Patch O'Furr

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.

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July 20, 2015

Anthrocon Anthrocon Anthrocon! Fluffsplosion of hype. NEWSDUMP (7/20/15)

by Patch O'Furr

Tips: patch.ofurr@gmail.com. 

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.)

Onion A.V. Club: Watch almost 1500 furries strut their stuff at this year’s Anthrocon.

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.

NPR: The Furries Have Landed — And Pittsburgh Is Giving Them A Bear Hug.

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July 13, 2015

If you visit New Orleans, see the anthropomorphic sculptures at Mardi Gras World.

by Patch O'Furr

Leviathan_float,_Orpheus,_Mardi_Gras

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.

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July 7, 2015

Anthrocon is upon us – Fandom in China and Taiwan – Woof Washer – NEWSDUMP (7/7/15)

by Patch O'Furr

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.  Guest posts welcome. “Local correspondents” wanted to talk about your local networks. 

Tips: patch.ofurr@gmail.com. 

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In The Media

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cityshirt_0Brace yourselves for Anthrocon coverage.

“Inside the furries: they’re people too”– from WTAE news in Pennsylvania:

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.

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July 6, 2015

San Francisco Pride, gay marriage, and historic happenings in Furry Mecca.

by Patch O'Furr

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Billet Sheltie – pic by Eric Campbell.

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:

In San Francisco, the news hit right at “gay christmas”.  The city was getting ready for Pride, “the largest gathering of LGBT people and allies in the nation.”

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.

The whole country was involved. The Chief of Police called it “the largest Pride celebration ever.”  Being mainstream was a big topic. On a subcultural level, the excitement spread among “the world’s greatest concentration of furries per square mile.” Furries were in the parade in 2005, returning in 2014 and 2015.

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Pic by Vincent

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June 29, 2015

Exclusive: Nordguard game and Windfall novel coming out at Anthrocon, from Tempe O’Kun.

by Patch O'Furr

tempo321In 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:unnamed

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.

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