Friends help beat cancer, Furry art gallery, Big Weird Cow… Newsdump (4/8/15)

by Patch O'Furr

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag. Tips are always welcome.

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Fandom News

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Furries donate thousands to help Draces beat cancer – He faces $90,000 in medical bills.

The donor page shows many furries pitching $100 or more each. The current total is around half of a $10,000 goal. On FurAffinity, Draces posted:

I want to thank everyone, especially my friends here that set up the donation page for me. I was asked if it would be okay for them to set up a page to collect donations for me. I told them if they want to they could but I really don’t expect to get much. Wow, was I surprised at how wrong I was. I can’t thank everyone enough for the amount of shares the page has gotten and how much was raised in such a short time… I want to hug each and everyone of you.

Furry art show reception, 4/4/15 in Santa Ana, CA.

From Sy Sable, supreme leader of long running furry house The Prancing Skiltaire:

This will be our 3rd year displaying a collection of art from local furry artists at the Avantgarden Gallery. This Saturday (4-4-15) is the reception, during the monthly Art Walk in Santa Ana, CA, 7-10 PM.

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“Wild Things” will fluff your fur with a second fetish party in San Francisco.

by Patch O'Furr

Wild Things 2: at San Francisco’s Citadel club – April 12, 2015

Artists and dealers are invited to show and sell your wares.
Info: (Ask me – patch.ofurr at gmail.)

(Art: Boiler)

Spring brings the birds and bees… and a surprise almost too hot to bear! The uncaged, unleashed Wild Things party is back. A special group of furries are partnered with a BDSM dungeon to top their daring experiment from November.

The first party was more fun than a barrel of monkeys. It beat all expectations… (and some naughty dogs who deserved spankings too). The announcement here broke traffic records. It was this blog’s top article of 2014. The party went so well, they had to hold back from promoting it.

With a short few days left, the surprise is here…

Get pre-sale tickets:

Wild Things 2: Spring Fever

It’s an open invite, Furry/petplay sex party. It’s “a special evening play session with dirty art, lights and music, fun and games.” It’s a “unique, gutsy, sexy, creative, WTF happening for consenting adult friends”. Yes, it’s really everything that giggling rumor-spreaders fear… and fearless freedom-lovers dream about.

DON’T FREAK OUT… Sex is just one sub-interest in the creative subculture of Furry. It’s a wide umbrella covering “everything from Disney to Dirty.” The “topic everyone loves to hate” doesn’t define it. But it’s valuable to push limits and grow freedom of expression. Sex is just an optional ingredient for some grown-ups who want it. Do you want it? Come get it.

There’s accommodation for shy people. The roomy club has space for dancing or cuddling, with fur and fluff. Other chill space is set aside for no-touch socializing and party snacks. Smoothies and snacks are included with admission. (There’s no alcohol due to licensing of this kind of club.)

This is meant to be an art and performing event, with creative animal costumes and play… not like a dirty movie where people sit around looking bored. You won’t find anything like this anywhere else. If you’ve seen “murrsuits”, they’re here. Costumes are heavily encouraged.

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April 7, 2015

French Anthropomorphic Animal Animated Features, Part 3 – by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

Series: French Anthropomorphic Animal Animated Features, Part 1 and Part 2. There will be four parts.

Continuing from where we left off …

Les As de la Jungle – Operation Banquise, directed by David Alaux and Éric Tosti. 58 minutes. December 31, 2011.

When a band of walruses terrorizes the South Pole, stealing the penguins’ eggs, the penguin brother and sister Ping (Tommy) and Pong travel to the jungle where “the Great Tiger Warrior” lives, to ask him to rescue them. The Great Tiger Warrior is Maurice, a penguin raised and striped like a tiger who believes he is one. Maurice agrees, and summons the rest of the Jungle Aces (the Jungle Bunch): Miguel the poetic tap-dancing gorilla, Fred the singing warthog, Gilbert the tiny paranoid tarsier (the brains of the team), Al & Bob, the two frogs of unknown talents, and last but by no means least, Junior the little tiger fish, Maurice’s adopted son (he travels with Maurice in a fishbowl) and kung-fu expert. On their way to Antarctica, they meet and add Batricia, a bat, to the Aces. Each fights the walruses with his or her own specialty, until the grand finale free-for-all. A children’s feature, for the 6+ age group.

Les As de la Jungle – Operation Banquise (The Jungle Aces – Operation Ice), also titled Les As de la Jungle – le Film, was an original CGI feature following David Alaux & Éric Tosti’s Toulouse-based TAT Productions’ Les As de la Jungle TV series of October 23 – November 4, 2011; 26 1½-minute episodes. It was shown as a TV movie on New Year’s Eve 2012, and released theatrically on April 10, 2013. Les As de la Jungle has been popular enough to return as Les As de la Jungle – A la Rescousse (The Jungle Bunch – To the Rescue) in 11-minute TV episodes from December 29, 2013. The movie has been sold as a theatrical or DVD feature to over 150 countries. In the U.S., the feature is a DVD as The Jungle Bunch: The Movie, with John Lithgow voicing Maurice. The movie won the Procirep French TV producers’ award in the animation category; the Audience Awards at the 7^th Animpact Max (November 28 – December 2) in Seoul, South Korea and the LUCAS International Children’s Film Festival in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany; and the 2013 Kidscreen Award in New York; and was nominated for a 2014 Emmy.

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April 6, 2015

Vermont town selectively bans fursuiters: Prejudice complaint and update.

by Patch O'Furr

Public fursuiting with the Vermont Furs.

The Vermont Furs have an active online presence including Facebook and Twitter. I see many positive events such as BBQ’s, bowling, camping, and a walk to benefit Cystic Fibrosis patients. They look like a fantastic group- the kind that makes me love everything about furries. But their activities are being harmed by treatment they feel is unfair.

Fursuiters kicked out of Mardi Gras event in Burlington, Vermont – but not others dressed in masks.

Why were they being singled out, the furries wanted to know, when the streets were teeming with other strangely dressed revelers?

“It’s just different,” was the response, Owens said.

A thoughtful and well-written article in the independent alt-weekly Seven Days recently covered the February 28 incident, and following talks with the city. The given reason was a lack of performer permits – (to be clear, none of them were busking or asking for money) – and child safety concerns.

For evidence, there was mention of a bad incident with a costumed “Elmo” Sesame Street character in New York’s Times Square. I googled the incident as suggested, but it didn’t mention children- only a panhandling offense. At the Seven Days article, I commented that it was quite a stretch to pick one sensationalized headline from hundreds of miles away, for a “think of the children” argument about people who weren’t hurting anybody.

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April 3, 2015

Publishing for Furries; a Look at Mainstream Writing For and About Furries, by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

This is a companion piece to Fred’s overview of The History of Furry Publishing. See Part One: Beginnings – and Part Two: Current Publishers.

This looks beyond publishing by-fans/for-fans, to books you might find in stores. There are very few because fans make a tiny market for a mainstream publisher. I’ve often said that I think it’s worth ambitiously hoping for a “Furry Bible” coffee table book (like a Taschen book) worth selling in stores one day.

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

Publishing for Furries; a Look at Mainstream Writing For and About Furries.

Okay, we’ve covered the specialty furry publishing companies. What furry books have there been from the non-furry publishers?

Most of them are either s-f & fantasy novels about talking animals, or how-to-draw books. You can probably find the former in the Literature or Science Fiction/Fantasy sections of bookstores, and the latter in the Animation or Art sections.

LITERATURE. The s-f & fantasy selection at bookstores is constantly changing. You can usually find such classics as: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, by Lewis Carroll (1865 and 1871); The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame (1908); Animal Farm, by George Orwell (1945); and Watership Down, by Richard Adams (1972), in Classics or Literature.

There have been so many s-f novels over the years that I won’t try to list them all. One that many furry fans have cited as particularly inspiring them is The Pride of Chanur, by C. J. Cherryh (1981). It and its sequels have been reprinted many times, and are likely to be easily available. A more Young Adult fantasy, usually in Children’s Books, is Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, by Robert C. O’Brien (1971), which will probably always be in print because it won the Newbery Medal.

The only non-furry anthology of furry short stories is Furry!: The World’s Best Anthropomorphic Fiction!, edited by Fred Patten (2006), still in print despite belief in furry fandom that it is out of print today.

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April 1, 2015

Frolic’s Menagerie: “the most furry place in the universe” gears up for a new party.

by Patch O'Furr

That’s a grandiose title I gave for a mere dance party. But give a little credit to the hard working Neonbunny. Or a lot…

Frolic, the party he started in 2010, is fairly called “the original” (for North America, anyways.) It’s inspired an entire movement. The post-2010 “Furclub” thing is rising with a full-fledged subculture. Furries aren’t just hosting cons for each other- they’re independently forging a new night life scene, in partnership with adventurous venues.

Now the original is trying something else. What’s new?

The venue (it’s just a couple of frisky leaps and bounds down the street) – and the attire: “fursuits, leather, harnesses, leashes, kigurmis, rubber, zentai, onesies, body paint, latex, and more.” OK… like usual, but more so. You can’t go wrong with that!

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March 31, 2015

Community > Commodity, and the value of WTF. Part 3 about the FurAffinity sale to IMVU.

by Patch O'Furr

A series of three articles:

The conclusion brings it all back to commercialization. I’ve reported this for a while: Measuring the Furry Economy. – Mainstream advertising: “More and more, Furries are being hinted at in marketing media!” – And the recent $11,575 record fursuit sale and $17,500 top price. Also try: Furry, not an obscure little fandom any more. I often say that the thriving growth of this subculture is built on WTF weirdness that can’t be digested by the mainstream. Will that stay true?

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3) Community > Commodity, and the value of WTF.

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You could write a whole book about a subculture’s place in the larger culture. (There’s a “Furry coffee table book” waiting to be written.) Here’s a very loose topic about it, with a point:

Commercialization makes some furries fear losing what they love. But the normals-scaring, freedom-raising, limit-pushing, WTF part of it may save the rest. The more fringe it is – the more it holds Furry back from acceptance, but keeps it strongly independent. More notice could be a win-win.

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March 30, 2015

IMVU does a Q&A with me. Part 2 about the sale of FurAffinity.

by Patch O'Furr

A series of three articles:

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2) Speaking with IMVU.

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FurAffinity just posted a Q&A with IMVU’s CEO Brett Durrett. A furry responded: Ashamed for the fandom; an apology to CEO Brett Durrett.

While seeking graphics, I just noticed they tweeted me from Fur Con in January! (Not endorsement, just spreading furriness.) Yay! Can you spot me among the eye-blasting pink, sparkles and rainbows? I was in camo.

Last day @furcon! We hope to see our #IMVU users at our booth and new FURiends too! #SundayFunday pic.twitter.com/leKpAJvNoF
— IMVU (@IMVU) January 18, 2015

My Q&A started:

This is for both IMVU and Dragoneer (Mr. Piche). I assume that some details may be kept private. I’ll build a news article from the answers, aiming for positive information not gossip. I’m curious to know: 1) The story of how IMVU and FurAffinity came together. 2) Terms of ownership now. 3) The future and your roles in leading users.

They responded to my long list:

Attached is the interview completed by Sean Piche, Fur Affinity Community Leader, IMVU; Kevin Henshaw, SVP Business Development, IMVU; and Varsha Pande, Director, Community Experience and User Safety. You’ll note a few of your questions were left unanswered as a matter of company disclosure policy. Thanks for the opportunity to talk about the Fur Affinity acquisition.

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3 comments

March 29, 2015

Fur Dance news – musicians and authors discover furries. Newsdump (3/29/15)

by Patch O'Furr

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag. Tips are always welcome.

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Fandom News

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San Francisco and “Furclub” activity.

Organizers let me have an inside view of the second Wild Things party coming up in April in San Francisco. November’s first event caused high traffic here and was a great success. Look for an update soon.

There was talk about Frolic dance party attracting furries for 5+ hour driving from Southern California. They have the long running Prancing Skiltaire house party, but they say they don’t have anything like Frolic. Carloads have been coming more and more often. They’re considering getting a bus. Every month, 300+ attendees have been packing the dance to capacity. The “furclub” movement is growing all over the place. Organizer Neonbunny is open to lend the name to anyone who wants to use it. In Europe, Cologne Fur Dance is said to draw 5-600 goers for two dances a year since 2008.

Author of “Funnybooks” learns what Furry Fandom is.

Fred Patten’s review got back to the author:

And for a review of Funnybooks written from a different perspective, that of “furry fandom,” let me refer to you Fred Patten’s review at this link. What is “furry fandom,” you may ask? I’m really not quite sure how to describe it, even though the phenomenon has attracted growing media coverage. Best you visit Fred’s “Dogpatch Press” site and explore “furry fandom” for yourself. Fred says of Funnybooks that it’s “the story of the comic-book publisher whose works did more than any others’ to inspire furry fandom,” and that should give you a clue as to what “furry fandom” is all about.

Remember Shawn Keller’s Horrifying Look at the Furries?

It’s been a long time, but he’s making new animation. Gorgeous! Check his history to see a cartoon series he started 7 months earlier.

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March 27, 2015

FurAffinity’s new ownership makes a turning point. Should fans fear commercialization?

by Patch O'Furr

(Via Greenreaper):

From 2008. Anthrocon has grown to generate $7 million in 2014.

A comment from 8Chan:

The furry community is loaded with cash compared to other niche internet communities and it’s been exploding in popularity over the last decade. Nowadays it’s becoming more apparent with kickstarter and patreon making the figures public and internet companies are starting to move in on their turf to get a cut before it really goes mainstream.

And for those doubting that it’s about to enter the mainstream just wait until “Zootopia” from Disney comes out in 2016. Even Marvel giving prominent roles to a furry character in their recent major Hollywood movie would have been unthinkable 10 years ago, people who study the furry phenomenon are expecting it to explode soon. Universities and marketing groups are preforming surveys and studies on the fandom, this is considered a legitimate field of study.

A series of three articles:

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Category: Society and culture

by Patch O'Furr

Fandom News

by Patch O'Furr

Wild Things 2: at San Francisco’s Citadel club – April 12, 2015

by Patch O'Furr

by Patch O'Furr

by Patch O'Furr

Publishing for Furries; a Look at Mainstream Writing For and About Furries.

by Patch O'Furr

by Patch O'Furr

A series of three articles:

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3) Community > Commodity, and the value of WTF.

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by Patch O'Furr

A series of three articles:

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2) Speaking with IMVU.

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by Patch O'Furr

Fandom News

by Patch O'Furr

A series of three articles: