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Fluff Pieces Every Week
August 16, 2021

The Omegle Cat Killer: A true crime tale of stopping online animal abuse (Part 1)

by Patch O'Furr

CONTENT WARNING for animal abuse – Part (1) A Killer – (2) A Trend – (3) A Watchdog

He had to be stopped. Someone was killing cats and posting the videos online. Internet sleuths were hunting a killer who reveled in taunting them. In December 2019, their story came out on Netflix as Don’t F*ck With Cats. It was one of the year’s most-watched documentaries.

As hard as they tried, identifying the killer wasn’t enough. They felt helpless until he escalated to killing a human victim and mailing the body parts to terror targets. Finally the authorities noticed, and Canadian man Luka Magnotta was caught and convicted. The story suggests that taking animal cruelty seriously could have saved a person, and it showed a trend for attention: “Murderers have become online broadcasters. And their audience is us.”

Months after the show, the same trend terrorized the furry fandom and made a new case for the FBI.

More than a copycat

In May 2020, the new Covid-19 situation was turning the world upside down. Stuck in quarantine, furry fans found a way to lift their spirits. They joined a regular event on the Omegle video chat service, using hashtags to meet fellow fans by random connection.

They weren’t expecting to connect to a woman in an animal-skin mask, gripping a bloody skull a little bigger than an egg. It almost looked fake, until she used a finger to pop out an eyeball like a grape.

Whoever was doing this wasn’t just shocking random targets. She knew about the event and targeted them with hashtags like #furries, #fursuit and #furryfandom. It made a trail with sightings of gory animal parts and links to Instagram and Tiktok. It was hard to document live incidents, but alarm spread and reached millions of viewers on Youtube. She got attention she wanted, but where did she come from?

The hype never told the full story. It passed like a blip and Youtubers and blogs quickly forgot. We’ll get to what happened in 2021 — but first, she didn’t just start in 2020 without warning. A path was laid much earlier.

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August 13, 2021

A Call for Preservation of Sources for Furry Fandom History

by Dogpatch Press Staff

Guest post by Gamepopper, an indie game maker and animation fan in the UK.

As a British furry who was interested in the history of the furry fandom, I couldn’t help but notice most of the subject was centred around the United States. This was the case in all the articles and convention panels I could find, and most blatantly in the book Furry Nation: The True Story of America’s Most Misunderstood Subculture by Joe Strike. This United States focus continues to this day with videos and documentaries such as The Fandom by Ash Coyote discussing the history of the fandom from the beginnings at science fiction and comic book conventions in California.

As a result, I took it upon myself in 2017 to look into my own country’s perspective of the fandom. This part-time hobby of mine culminated into a lecture at ConFuzzled 2019, The History of the Furry Fandom in the United Kingdom, which focused on the growth of the fandom from the earliest known gathering of twenty fans in 1987 to the present day conventions of over two thousand furries. I spoke about the housecons and fanzines in the nineties, furmeets and mailing lists in the noughties, and the British furry conventions and the difficulties getting them off the ground. I also allowed audience members to make comments and ask questions throughout, which you can listen to in the recorded version uploaded to YouTube.

Watching it in retrospect, I’m still proud of the amount of content in the work, in spite of a few factual errors and omissions that a few people have noted. On the day itself, it went over better than I ever anticipated, with a full room of attendees giving a huge round of applause at the end and many furries coming up to me to appraise my work. One of those people thought that the full history should be written down, and, given the amount of work I had already done, I felt up to the task.

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June 17, 2021

History of Furcadia, the Guinness Record-winning furry MMO, and Q&A with co-creator Dr. Cat 

by Patch O'Furr

In the early days of the internet, on dialup BBS’s and the pre-smartphone web, many fans knew they were furry before it had a name. When they logged on to find each other, a home PC became a fantasy portal for instant chatting with other talking animals. It was thrilling because who wants to play a regular human? Some haters treated them as the black sheep of nerds, but looking back, they were the first wave of a major force in the culture.

In the late 1980’s and 90’s, MMOs/MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) popularized internet communities for fun. MMO’s were an evolution with graphics added to text-based MUDs (Multi User Dungeons) and MUCKs; starting in the 1970s, these were often accessed through universities. Some let users build their world, and were significant to early organized furry fandom, like FurryMUCK (1990), Tapestries MUCK (1991), FurToonia (1994), Sociopolitical Ramifications (1994) or TigerMUCK (1994). Eventually World of Warcraft grew to dominate MMO’s with millions of users.

The furry MMO Furcadia was at the front.

Furcadia facts:

  • It was founded in 1996 by Dr. Cat (Felorin) and Talzhemir, with many other contributors.
  • In its heyday, it was called the largest online furry community (- wikifur) with tens of thousands of users. It was also one of the first freemium online games.
  • Dr. Cat (below): “In the 1990s, I feel like I was one of the first people to move, along with the rest of the fledgling new online games and MMO segment of the industry, from a vision of ‘Games as a Product’ to ‘Games as a Service’… Furcadia started out as one of the very first significant scale user created content games in the industry.”
  • A 2003 Gamespy article reviewed its part in indie game development, and placing as an award finalist at the Independent Games Festival.
  • In 2010, it earned a Guinness World Record for being the longest-running social MMO.
  • In 2012, Furcadia raised $106,835 in crowdfunding to develop a full-game overhaul called “Second Dreaming”.
  • Weird: years before My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic existed, Furcadia had an MLP environment that had Nazi Ponies vs. a Resistance, to fan regret.

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June 4, 2021

$50,000 FURSUIT: crypto-fueled bidding smashes auction record at The Dealers Den

by Patch O'Furr

The new all-time fursuit auction record is worth a nice car or some people’s yearly income. (Highest commission is a different number.) It’s been 3 years since the last record by MixedCandy: A look at furry business with a $17,017 record fursuit auction price, July 2018.

Shifting winds of tech and business helped make this possible; it has to do with porn, politics, and payment providers. We’ll get into that… but I’m sure that wasn’t on the mind of Zuri Studios, the maker based in the Czech Republic with a fluffalicious folio of “god tier fursuits“. (This auction is a contract to create one, not an existing fursuit.)

Zuri Studios just found out there’s no business like sew business.

$100K fursuit when?

Tripling the record since 2018 gets steaming hot takes on social media. How can any suit be worth so much? 

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May 27, 2021

Good Furry Award open for nominations until May 31; Ursa Major Award winners for 2020

by Patch O'Furr

There’s a few days left to nominate a furry for the 2021 Good Furry Award!

The award recognizes furries who show the best side of the fandom or work to help others. In 2020, The Fandom documentary maker Ash Coyote won, after Tony “Dogbomb” Barrett in 2019. A trophy and $500 goes to the winner, to be announced by Grubbs Grizzly on his “Ask Papabear” website in June. To help you decide, there’s a list of nominees that makes a good read about furry happenings. More than thirty nominees are eligible for your vote now.

Have you seen or heard anything furry in 2021 that might deserve an Ursa Major Award? 

You can suggest it now for the 2021 Recommended Anthropomorphics List! The list is a guide (but not the limit) for who may deserve an award nomination at the end of the year.

Last month all of last year’s Ursa Major Award winners were announced on YouTube.

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May 24, 2021

Jimmy Kimmel’s Fursuit Fixation

by Joe Strike

Welcome to guest Joe Strike, journalist and author of Furry Nation, the furry fandom history book. (- Patch)

It’s not the first time Jimmy Kimmel has exploited Furry for a cheap laugh or two. (Furs with long memories or prone to Wikifur browsing might remember Kimmel/The Man Show’s 2003 ConFurence controversy.)

— but Kimmel (or his writers’) anti-furry bias has resurfaced with vengeance, judging from a couple of recent throwaway Jimmy Kimmel Show gags. On May 5th Kimmel referenced the ongoing NaziFur controversy in the most trivializing/assholey manner possible:

“Twitter has a feature now that will double-check with you before you post a mean or offensive comment… some people even want to get on the list [of comments or language that should be confirmed before posting].

He then posted a screen capture of a news story comment reading “Can we get “NaziFur” added to the toxicity list? It’s used by furrys [sic] who want to demonize other furrys who they can hate and it causes them irreparable reputational harm.”

Kimmel’s “clever” comeback (perhaps inspired by that memorable Entourage episode – ):

“That’s right, it causes ‘harm’ to the reputations of those of us who like to get a handy in a squirrel costume every once in a while.”

Yes, because nothing says “funny” like comparing fascism to masturbation.

Gag can be viewed here; comment author posted as a nazifur and was banned from Furaffinity.

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May 14, 2021

Mass shooting shows 6 reasons for furries to worry about the causes.

by Patch O'Furr

Last month, Equestria Daily warned about blowback to fans: The Indianapolis FedEx Mass Shooter Was Apparently A Brony, and Obsessed with Applejack. The 19 year old shooter carried it out after posting online that he hoped to see the cartoon character in the afterlife. “Brony” stands out by the Man Bites Dog rule, but there’s more details. Previously he had a gun seized, and got confined for threats after visiting white supremacist websites. Half of those killed were Sikhs. (I REALLY hate that, because of learning about this at the birthday of a Sikh friend. Every one I’ve met is a sweetheart.)

Rolling Stone asked: “Do Bronies have a Nazi problem?” They say fandom isn’t inherently problematic, but it faces infiltration by problems. Being a fan of cartoons isn’t a threat, but there’s threats coming out of fandom. Maybe giving a heads up about negativity should also say…

1: It’s not the only incident.

  • (2020): In Texas, Daniel Perry killed a protester after tweeting about how to kill protesters. His FurAffinity page got far-right gloating.
  • (2020): Furry in Ohio shot up a school, thankfully just hitting the building and nobody was hurt.
  • (2017): Randy Stair, a Brony who made animated fan videos, did a mass shooting at his workplace that was predicted by his creations.
  • (2016:) 3 killed in Fullerton CA by 3 furries, they all mingled at furry events and might not have met without them.

Maybe this isn’t more frequent than in general society, but do they share context? And isn’t one shooting too many?

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April 26, 2021

Fuzznet Music sounds off on new growth and features for musicians

by Patch O'Furr

For musical furries, Fuzznet is the cat’s meow. It serves musicians like a publisher serves writers, giving them a collective home and ways to be discovered. It was last covered here in October 2020. Finn, the founder, says Fuzznet has been expanding in all directions, so here’s an update with some big and round numbers.

“We reached 600 monthly Listeners, 15k monthly Streams, and 500+ Followers on Spotify alone. We now have over 50 artists under our roof, including people like YaiSor (makes music for Adler The Eagle), TygreCub and Manicknux, and by now have 300+ songs released!

Last month was the first month we were able to reach a huge milestone of paying out profits to artists. We had cooperations with the FurryMusicians page on FA offering spots on our collective to Music Contest winners, signed a huge upcoming partnership with Entail, and supplying them with music for their marketing and branding in the future. We also had a bunch of people reaching out to work with us or request music for their projects.”

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March 25, 2021

Peter Beagle recovers rights to The Last Unicorn and his body of work

by Patch O'Furr

VOTE HERE for the Ursa Major Awards! From March 1-31, support furry creators.

A long road

In 2014, Peter’s manager was accused of fraud. The criticism led to a public relations and legal battle including me (see comment below story); Peter supported my defense, and followed me in suing the manager in 2015. It was a triangle and we both prevailed.

In 2019 I took dismissal of the manager’s claims against me and a judgement of $32K.

Peter proved he was a victim of fraud, elder abuse, and defamation by the manager. He was awarded $332K in damages.

Peter’s creative rights were still tied up, until his team just sent the news he is entirely free with a message for Peter’s supporters.

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March 9, 2021

The Captain’s Oath, by Rick Griffin — book review by Gre7g Luterman

by Dogpatch Press Staff

VOTE HERE for the Ursa Major Awards! From March 1-31, support furry creators.

Welcome to Gre7g Luterman, science fiction author reviewed here. Find him online at his site or Twitter.

The Captain’s Oath is book two in an epic science fiction trilogy about a struggle against oppression, featuring illustrations by author and artist Rick Griffin. [Full disclosure: I’ve been a beta reader on this project since the trilogy was a novel-length draft.]

What would you do to escape from slavery? It’s not as simple a question as it might seem. For although the crew of the White Flower II are definitely slaves, it’s not like someone stands over them with a whip, watching them pick cotton. The krakun (an alien race that look like dragons) indoctrinate the geroo (an alien race that look like anthropomorphic kangaroos) from birth into believing that they are willing employees. Additionally, they let the geroo live in just enough comfort to keep the crew from considering any form of revolt.

Ateri, the captain of the White Flower II, has been considering escape his whole life, and when a ship of pirates offers him a chance at freedom (a do-or-die offer, admittedly), they enter into a conspiracy that can only lead to freedom or the execution of every man, woman, and child aboard. The plan has three parts, which roughly correspond to the books in the trilogy.

Step 1: Trick the krakun into believing that a newly discovered planet can be terraformed into a new home world.

Step 2: Lay low while the krakun bring in a terraformer (the single most expensive machine in the known galaxy).

Step 3: Steal the transformer and sell it.

The first book in The Final Days of the White Flower II trilogy was called Traitors, Thieves, and Liars (published February 2019). It followed Gert and a pair of pirates as they snuck aboard a krakun survey ship to plant doctored data.

The second book, The Captain’s Oath (published February 2021), largely abandons Gert to follow the ship’s science officer, Tesko. I’ll admit that I was leery of this decision initially, but as this book has become my favorite novel of all time (furry or mainstream), clearly it was a good choice on Mr. Griffin’s part.

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