Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Tag: Disney

Buzzfeed’s worst of 2015, Furry Chic in 2016, and Fred’s birthday. NEWSDUMP (12/18/15)

by Patch O'Furr

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

Fred Patten’s birthday was December 11 – Happy 75th, Fred!

300px-Fred_PattenRead an interview with Fred about the founding of Furry fandom, by esteemed novelist Phil Geusz.  Thanks Fred for bringing so much content that helps Dogpatch Press to put out Furry News every week day.  Sorry that this went out too late to share Furplanet’s weekend birthday discount sale for Fred’s titles.  But check them out:

“Accidental Guests of the Midwest Fur Fest” – outsider appreciation gets viral views.

This personal blog post got lots of love.  The Healthy Not Nuts blog covers a husband and wife’s thoughts on recipes, diet, health and photography.  It’s lovely when Furries add spice to the mundane!  “…how can you not love these creatures that look so cute, cuddly and happy all of the time?”  The post earned 267 comments.  The writer shared an appreciation letter for the post, where he mentioned getting over 20,000 views.

Furries in Buzzfeed’s “The 50 Worst Things On The Internet In 2015.” (NSFW)

Use this archive link (so they get no incentive to publish unforgivable crap).  Furries are in items 14, 20, 31, and 46.  There’s also bonus bronies, puppy and pony players. Whether it’s love or hate, at least things are never boring…

Goodbye to Furnation.

FurnationFurnation was one of the first visible Web presences for Furry fandom. It helped many to discover their fursonas in the 1990’s. Reddit calls it “the end of an era.” Flayrah gave it a feature under it’s tag for collected coverage. Social network Furrtrax made a generous offer of free hosting to keep it online.  I tried helping, but got the feeling that Furnation’s admin was too burnt out with health problems to devote an ounce of effort for community moderation. I also assume the build of the site might be antiquated and burdensome (perhaps technical, or with copyright for content built by individuals.) It’s influence lives on in places like FurPlanet (formed from Furnation Magazine), one of the 3 main Furry publishers.

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Friend of community dies in shooting, Zootopia and animation – NEWSDUMP (12/07/15)

by Patch O'Furr

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

Friend of the community lost in mass shooting in San Bernardino CA. (Tip: Bosn Otter.)

EP-151209804The tragedy on December 2 is described as terrorism-related, and left 14 dead and 21 injured.

Bosn said Dan Kaufman was “a friend to the furry community… a friend to pretty much everybody he ever met.”

  • ABC7.com: “A coffee shop worker killed in the San Bernardino mass shooting on Wednesday was remembered by loved ones as a caring and compassionate man.”
  • Inside Edition: Kaufman was “named as one of the victims of the San Bernardino massacre after his partner initially thought he’d survived.”
  • L.A. Times: “For victim’s boyfriend, 22 hours of conflicting reports, then heartbreak”
  • SBsun.com: “jovial person who touched lives”
  • The Guardian: “a gregarious free spirit who adored horror films”
  • PE.com: “Kaufman liked dressing up in costume and performed for 16 years in a local Renaissance Faire.”
  • L.A. Times: “dressed as an Italian noble with a stiff lace collar and a pewter goblet, or as a peasant riding a horse”
  • Frontiers Media: “San Bernardino Mass Shooting Took Gay Victim”

His Facebook account gave the impression that he had lots of friends through cons and the Ren Faires.  It was hard to find direct Furry connections, although some of his last pics were from a comic con I went to 1 month ago (Comikaze Expo) where he cosplayed as a wolf.

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Costume bans and security, part 3: Want to organize a furmeet for Zootopia? Here’s how.

by Patch O'Furr

nugget

Nugget, fursuit of Salem Wolf

Response to the articles:

There were a lot of great comments!  It does seem like the feeling of high anticipation is true.

Screen Shot 2015-11-18 at 2.05.17 AM

There was one piece of confusion for some readers. Going to the movies in costume doesn’t mean wearing it during a movie. Parts will come off to watch it, and theater rentals may include change space. Members of local meets are interested in a social experience before and after, like a “crawl” around town.

Costuming and security is a much wider issue.  I’ve heard rumors about cons encountering problems with organizing, while making hotel deals and then being surprised by rules against masks in their public space.  Biggest Little Fur Con has to carefully manage no-mask rules on the casino floor of their hotel.  FurTheMore convention moved to Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, in May 2015, where there’s a statewide anti-mask law.  A staff member told me they had to work with police to get a special weekend festival exemption.  The con put out official instructions not to go off hotel grounds in fursuit, or risk arrest.  Costumers will have to deal with the issue in the future.

Interested in organizing your own movie meet – to get trust, and permission for costumes?

You can get a good start by collecting RSVP’s from friends and local members. If you’re able to get several dozen, a whole theater rental may be in your range. Scout around and see if there are local ones that support community events.  Once you’ve proposed and negotiated rates and times, the next steps would be signing a commitment, or collecting ticket/deposit money in advance (depending on how payment is supposed to happen).

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Bad news for fans who plan to see highly anticipated movies in costume.

by Patch O'Furr

In March, Zootopia is going to bring all the furries!

Everywhere furries are, they’re talking about meets for Zootopia’s opening week.  My area has a proposed meet (without even a location) and already 44 are signed up. At this rate, they’ll pack a whole theater of their own (and it’s being arranged.)  Mention the idea, and without fail everyone loves it. Many want to go in fursuit.  I won’t be surprised if furmeets makes headlines.  I feel like this movie will bring Furry Fever like no other.  Is this happening in your area, too?

Why go to the movies in costume?  You’re just sitting in the dark.  Well, for some it’s just a great excuse to celebrate a shared experience with fandom. (NOTE: There has been a lot of confusion about this.  It doesn’t mean to wear a costume DURING the movie.)

Here’s a sign of the hype.  In June, maker Crafty Critters went outside furry preference for all-original characters by making a Nick Wilde Cosplay fursuit.  It appeared astonishingly early after Disney’s June 11 release of the Zootopia trailer – just in time for Anthrocon.

Nobody knows who the owner is.

At Anthrocon. Nobody knows who the owner is.

Buzz kill – Theaters are getting paranoid about security and banning masks. (NOTE: the entire article was completed prior to tragedies in France.)
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The Great Fursplosion of 2016 is getting near. NEWSDUMP (11/10/15)

by Patch O'Furr

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

unnamedNPR interviews Tempe O’Kun, furry favorite author (again.)

Hear the interview on the radio site. Talk to Tempe on his FA post about it.

About a year ago, NPR station Prairie Public’s “Main Street” show interviewed Tempe about cuddly Furry romance writing.  Lucky dog!  It was 23 minutes of super respectful attention.  My notice about it brought Tempe here, to share an exclusive peek at his novel Windfall and work for the Nordguard card game. Thanks Tempe, and keep it coming.

A Zootopia animator “publicly and positively acknowledged furries.” (Tip: Crossaffliction on Flayrah.)

The tweet is taken down.  VERY CURIOUS.  I wonder if Disney is controlling marketing strategy for something they want strictly behind the scenes, to tease but not come right out about it.   This subculture is tiny, but buzz can be mighty.

I sent an interview request to the animator, and told him: “You may be aware that we’re all going NUTS about this movie. Some active areas already have meets organized to wear costumes out to the theater (and I think that’s going to happen everywhere.)”

Some furries have always known that Tony the Tiger is a stud.  Trashy news blogs discovered our crush and went nuts. (They’re late to the party.)

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Furry Halloween treats, McGruff Goes To Jail – NEWSDUMP (11/4/15)

by Patch O'Furr

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

12189827_1150763194953018_5433177237520487821_nHalloween treats:  Popularity for Rocket Raccoon, and some looks at the culture of costuming.

Mom’s costume creation goes viral, ‘wins’ Halloween 2015.  A very lucky kid in Michigan got to be an accurately-diminutive Rocket Raccoon, complete with moving jaw.  It got shared on Facebook by the director of Guardians of The Galaxy.  This isn’t claimed to be overtly “furry”, but when Mom makes cosplay outfits for Comic Con… it makes you wonder what research helped to build it from scratch.

UPDATE: The maker confirmed to me that Furry tutorials helped build it. I asked her opinion of furries, and she says:

It’s some tough work everyone does and all of you should be proud. I made so many mistakes because there aren’t a lot of tutorials for doing stuff like this. I honestly didn’t know too much about furries until I was trying to research how to make a movable mouth for my son.

In Huntsville Alabama, inside the business of Fig Leaf Costumes: “it looks like a dressing room for furries in here.” Read between the lines, and the article might involve us, maybe indirectly. There’s this thoughtful tidbit:

So why does he still enjoy playing dress up at age 35? “I love how people react. If you dressed up as a character they love they come over and give you a hug. It’s just a good feeling,” says Harrison, who along with his girlfriend plans to dress up in a couples costume for Halloween this year: “Lady and The Tramp.” Burkholder thinks the trend of adults continuing to dress in costumes, for Halloween and otherwise, is due to “Gen X feels a little bit lost so what we’re doing is claiming a little bit of a community for ourselves, especially with cosplay. And also with modernity people move away from so they want to form a sense of community, so whether it’s videogames or cosplay it’s people coming together. And I like that.

Milford Schools Criticized Nationally Over ‘Halloween Ban’.” A smaller city in Connecticut planned to stop costuming at some public schools.  That quickly changed after everyone growled about political correctness.  It reminds me of a similar-sized city in Vermont banning fursuiters.  Are they just too uptight in New England?  Are some people afraid of self-expression?

16 year sentence for McGruff the Crime Dog.

“The actor who played the crime-fighting cartoon character McGruff the Crime Dog, was sentenced to 16 years in prison stemming from a 2011 arrest in which police seized 1,000 marijuana plants, 27 weapons – including a grenade launcher – and 9,000 rounds of ammunition from his home…”

mcgruff-grenade-launcher

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Zootopia characters revealed, Furries on NCIS, 7 foot tall furry hugs – NEWSDUMP (10/26/15)

by Patch O'Furr

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

"Bonnie Hunt provides the voice of Bonnie Hopps. Judy's mother. Don Lake voices Judy’s father, Stu Hopps, a carrot farmer from Bunnyburrow. (Disney)"

“Bonnie Hunt provides the voice of Bonnie Hopps. Judy’s mother. Don Lake voices Judy’s father, Stu Hopps, a carrot farmer from Bunnyburrow. (Disney)”

USA Today shares a lot of new Zootopia images and story hints.

Are you excited for Disney’s new furriest movie?  Mrs. Otterton’s missing husband spurs the action on.  There’s “Duke Weaselton, a small-time weasel crook with a big-time mouth”. Judy Hopps is “a ground-breaking rabbit trying to make it as a cop” – it sounds like bunnies usually aren’t cops, so we get a nice hint about what species means in the Zootopia world.  Enjoy more from USA Today’s exclusive Facebook gallery.

You know furries everywhere are getting ready for the 2016 Furmageddon*… in the SF Bay area, dozens are already signed up to go fursuiting to the opening in March. (*I’ve been reminded that Furpocalypse is a convention happening this weekend.)

Furries on NCIS Los Angeles.

Last week there was a CSI-style bad furry stereotype on iZombie.  This week, two NCIS characters revealed furriness.

Go to 18:00 in the link.  The important part starts at around 19:00.  It goes for about a minute, with one more remark before the scene cuts at 21:00.  It’s lightly humorous, maybe flirty banter between the two characters.  They joke about how furry conventions can “go off the rails”, but that’s the worst judgement.  They discuss fursonas and share appreciation, making a nice, innocuous minute in the pop culture spotlight. Isn’t that a relief?

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Furries at Burning Man, Pride parade, and Mascots movie – NEWSDUMP (9/21/15)

by Patch O'Furr

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

Furries at Burning Man – Amazing fursuit programmed to light up with movement!  Don’t miss the suit at 1:10. (Vid by Vox Fox).  

German news article:  “EUROFURENCE In Video – The Furries conquer Neukölln.”

The coming 2016 Furpocalypse is getting ridiculous: Netflix announces “Mascots” movie, from famed mockumentary maker Christopher Guest. 

Brace yourselves, Disney’s Zootopia is coming. Now this: a grade-A Hollywood director is tackling “fursploitation”, my catch-all genre that has many mediocre failures and just a few sparkling hits (like CollegeHumor’s Furry Force.) Chris Guest is famous for popularizing “mockumentary” with movies like This Is Spinal Tap and Best In Show. His “Mascots” will be on Netflix in 2016. There’s little info about it yet except a very short summary:

Welcome to all the drama, intrigue and occasional excitement of the 8th World Mascot Association Championships, where a group of ‘unusual’ men and women, with big heads and furry suits, compete to win the prestigious Gold Fluffy Award and be crowned best mascot in the world.

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Snow White vs. All Dogs Go To Heaven: A Look at How Kid’s Movies Encouraged the Founding of the Furry Fandom.

by Patch O'Furr

 Here’s a fantastic guest post by Amanda Riesling. Her blog’s recent post about Furries is highly recommended. – Patch

Note: This article concerns itself exclusively with fully animated feature films produced in America and released prior to 2000. The article’s scope is limited so narrowly mainly because it is a blog post and therefore too short to cover a wide range of media. If you care why the parameters were chosen, there’s a note at the bottom of the article.

Cartoons are a fantastic storytelling medium because all you need to do is make sure your story can be translated into visual images. That’s it. Once you tick that box, you can cast off the confines of reality and tell whatever story you want.

tumblr_mhhr8dPvpq1rmnmfuo1_250However, despite the visual freedom, a good storyteller still needs to tell a story the audience can relate to. In my opinion, this is the real key to why anthropomorphic stories encouraged the furry fandom.

An audience needs to see themselves in the hero. They need to be able to project themselves and relate to that character. If they can’t bond with the main character somehow, they won’t enjoy the movie. If your main characters are human, half the battle is done for you. In fact, the blander, more generic your human hero is, the easier it will be for the audience to relate. You can have the goddamn Matrix going on, but as long as your main dude is an expressionless white guy with a vague backstory, people can pretend to be him. For a more pop-culture version of what I’m saying, watch Cracked.com’s video.

If your main character is a human, this is great news for your film. Your character can be bland, and your story can be as shallow as a Petri dish, and people will still relate because they see a human face. (Not that all human-centered movies are shallow. I said can be. They don’t have to be.)

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Pride in Furry Mecca – Viral views for Zootopia – Crushing on foxes – Newsdump (6/22/15)

by Patch O'Furr

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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via chrisastro.com

From 2014, via chrisastro.com

On June 28, San Francisco Pride is going to be awesome for furries!

The Bay Area Furries are all ready to march in the parade.  Pride is the height of street fair season in “Furry Mecca”.  It’s one of the most loved activities for an active section of the community.  2014 was the first Furry appearance in the parade since 2005. They had attendance of 50+, and TV coverage with a million-strong audience.  RSVP’s are 25% stronger than last year, with days left to grow.  Two leaders got the event organized, despite unavailability of an important third from last year.

Califur visited by television naturalist Figgy Dobbs.

An Inside Look at the Furries in Their Natural Habitat!

Buzzfeed podcast covers furries (via earthfurst).

BuzzFeed’s Internet Explorer does “A Deep Dive Into Furries”.  It starts at 6:45.  I missed this in April.  It calls furries “the greatest mystery of the internet”.  As usual, Buzzfeed is a dubious source – it mentions FurryMate but overlooks their bots.  I won’t forgive them for spreading lies about the NJ FurBQ Hoax.

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