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Fluff Pieces Every Week

Tag: furries

October 26, 2015

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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October 23, 2015

ROAR vol. 6 – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer, submits this review:

ROAR volume 6, Scoundrels, edited by Mary E. Lowd.
Dallas, TX, Bad Dog Books, July 2015, trade paperback $19.95 (394 pages), Kindle $9.95.

ROAR6ROAR, Bad Dog Books’ about-annual anthology of non-erotic furry adventure short fiction, enters a new phase with volume 6. Volumes 2 through 5 were edited by Buck C. Turner. Mary E. Lowd takes over with #6, and she’s announced as the editor for 2016’s #7. What are the differences?

ROAR has grown considerably larger. #1, edited by Ben Goodridge in 2007, has 12 stories in 277 pages. #2 through #5, edited by Buck Turner, expanded slowly and erratically — #2 in 2010 is 6 stories in 320 pages, #3 is 10 stories in 260 pages, #4 is 12 stories in 297 pages, and #5 is 14 stories in 325 pages. (All previous volumes are still available.) ROAR #6 is 28 stories in 394 pages; a large jump forward.

ROAR #1 through #5 contain furry dramatic adventures and serious mood pieces. #6 adds humor to the mixture. Here are the first half-dozen stories:

“Squonk the Dragon” by Pete Butler. A dragon’s egg is hatched by Mrs. Tweedle-Chirp, a small blue bird. Squonk builds a nest for himself at the top of a giant tree. Wendel the wizard assumes that all dragons live in caves, so Squonk must be a scoundrel and tries to get rid of him. The story is enjoyably amusing, but it feels more like a case of mistaken identity, not a real scoundrel.

“Brush and Sniff” by mwalimu. Berek, an adolescent in a small village of anthro wolves, is given Itchit, a captured wild squirrel as a pet. He gradually trains Itchit (who he calls Brush) through kindness to accept him. The story is developed through both viewpoints; Berek’s and Itchit’s. This is a gentle, well-written mood piece, though there is no real reason for Berek and his family and neighbors to be anthro wolves rather than humans. This could be any story about a frontier boy coaxing a wild squirrel to accept him.

“Faithful” by Marshall L. Moseley. Okay, this is a drama with justifiable anthro characters and a real scoundrel. Read the rest of this entry »

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October 22, 2015

French Comic: Léonid. T. 1, Les Deux Albinos – review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

91pzQz5K1xLLéonid. T. 1, Les Deux Albinos, by Frédéric Brrémaud & Stefano Turconi.
Toulon, France, Soleil, August 2015, hardcover €10,95 (48 pages).

My thanks to Lex Nakashima, as usual for this French bande dessinée album.

At first glance, Léonid looks like a cute funny-animal comic book featuring cats, roughly similar to Disney’s 1970 The Aristocats. But its story, full of blood and terror, is closer to the German Felidae, either the 1989 novel by Akif Pirinçci or the furry-convention-favorite 1994 animated feature. (Both are good, but the movie simplifies the complex story.)

The locale is the farming district of Deux-Sèvres, in central-west France. “Léonid is a cat, not yet an adult, but not a kitten, either. Just a young cat. He lives in a house in the district, in the midst of trees, pretty far from any city and close to a farm.” Léonid is a young housecat, living with two other housecats (Hoa Mai, a Siamese, and Rosso, an elderly orange Pekinese) and a dog (Mirza, a toy terrier). His household is also the home of Atchi, a mouse constantly sneezing because he’s allergic to cat hairs. Léonid is allowed outside during the daytime to associate and play with the local feral cats; the female black-&-white Ba’on, and the males Bouboule (the fat one), Arsène (the nervous one), and an anonymous one (because he’s almost immediately killed).

Two newborn lambs are slaughtered at night, apparently by a wild animal. The cats inside a house are presumably safe, but the feral cats who spend nights outdoors worry that a fox may have moved into the neighborhood – or (for those who fear the less-probable predators) a wolf or an ermine. Léonid finds out that it was two bloodthirsty albino cats, but at first he can’t convince anyone else. They think that he’s exaggerating to make himself look important; then, when the two albinos kidnap Ba’on, they say that it’s every cat for himself. Meanwhile, the farmer has set Zeus and Apollon, his two killer hounds, loose to safeguard the rest of his flock, and the dogs run bloodily through the neighborhood as a savage danger to all of the cats who aren’t safe in houses.

The Two Albinos is mostly the story of how Ba’on is kidnapped by the two albinos to be their slave, and how Léonid and Atchi, the sneezing mouse, venture outside to her rescue. They’re successful, but not really because Ba’on reveals that while she was in the albino cats’ power, they boasted that they are just the vanguard of “the horde”, “the avant-garde of the terror of Great Attila, our guide” who will kill or enslave all the animals of the district.   Léonid, Ba’on, Aichi, Hoa Mai, Rossi, and Mirza are left wondering what to do when Attila and his horde arrive? Read the rest of this entry »

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October 21, 2015

By Tooth and Claw: Clan of the Claw, Edited by Bill Fawcett – Book Review By Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

By Tooth and ClawBy Tooth and Claw: Clan of the Claw, Book 2 [edited by Bill Fawcett].
Riverdale, NY, Baen Books, April 2015, trade paperback $15.00 (309 pages), Kindle $8.99.

Book 1, Exiled: Clan of the Claw, was published in August 2011. I had begun to think that Book 2 would never come out.

Bill Fawcett has been editing, or packaging, books about the anthropomorphic feline Mrem fighting the anthropomorphic reptilian Liskash/Lizcanth for over twenty-five years. In 1989/90 he got four paperback novels by different authors published in Bantam Spectra’s Guardians of the Three series. Only one was any good, but that one, Keeper of the City by Peter Morwood & Diane Duane, is one of the finest anthropomorphic adventures ever written, well worth seeking out today. Fawcett’s second series, the 1999 three Shattered Light paperbacks for Pocket Books, was notable for only Catseye by William R. Forschen & Jaki Demarest, a cheerful ripoff of Dumas’ The Three Musketeers with a human teenage swordsman trying to join three Mrem King’s musketeers fighting a Lizcanth Cardinal’s Guard.

The Clan of the Claw series for Baen Books supposes that the giant meteor that crashed into the Earth 65.5 million years ago, causing the extinction of the dinosaurs (according to many paleontologists), never occurred. (This is the same premise as Pixar’s forthcoming The Good Dinosaur.) The dinosaurs continued to evolve and became the reptilian manlike Liskash. The new mammals also evolved and gave rise to the manlike felinoid Mrem. The two are deadly enemies. Both are about of Bronze Age technology, and possess “magic” that may really be psionic powers. The series takes place about 5.3 million years ago, when the Atlantic Ocean has just broken into and drowned the dry Mediterranean basin. The Clan of the Claw outline postulates that several clans of Mrem were living in the Mediterranean valley at the time. Most of those who did not drown scrambled up to the north to join the other Mrem clans in what is Europe today. One clan, the Clan of the Claw, went south and found itself in what is today North Africa, surrounded by hostile Liskash clans. The Mrem must battle their way around the new Mediterranean Sea to reach the other Mrem in Europe, endlessly defeating one Liskash clan after another. Read the rest of this entry »

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October 20, 2015

Tinder Stricken, by Heidi C. Vlach – Book Review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

Tinder Stricken, by Heidi C. Vlach.tinderstrickenfin_1750-by-2500
Sudbury, Ontario, Heidi C. Vlach, May 2015, trade paperback $14.00 (266 pages), Kindle $3.99.

“By dawn’s feeble light and one smoldering candle, Esha stared into the polished tin mirror, full of dread like every other morning. The goat had stolen a little more of her body through the night.” (p. 1)

Esha lives in a world in which most people turn into animals during their lifetimes:

“Only the luckiest people got to see their faces turn distinguished and their human hair go silver. The heavens gave humans precious little time in their ideal bodies and capable minds, before they slid back into more bestial form. Esha had reached her forty-eighth year of life and she was still mostly presentable – after physicians telling her she would be a bleating beast by her thirty-fifth. To some degree, Esha was doing well.” (ibid.)

Esha may be doing well physically, but socially she is among the lowest castes. Her world has an Eastern Asian aura; her greeting is “namaste”, her currency is rupees, bamboo grows everywhere; she is a farm woman working in the fields – her official name is Esha Of The Fields – of the Janjuman Farms, along with many identical low-caste women of the Fields. Most of them chew betel, a common narcotic. Esha has many field-sisters, but she has only one close friend; Gita Of The Fields, who is turning into a deer.

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October 19, 2015

Austin Furry Dance organizer Whines gives a Q&A for the Furclub Survey.

by Patch O'Furr

Furclubbing: “A repeat/regular nightclub event by furries for furries.”  It’s a New Thing that’s been spreading since the late 2000’s.  This kind of dance party is independent from conventions.  This builds on the growth of cons, and takes things farther.

It’s more ambitious than events that happen once, house parties, or informal meets.  Those can stay inner-focused for friends who already know each other.   This brings partnership with venues that aren’t hotels, and new supportive interest in the kind of events they host.  It crosses a line to public space.  A stranger may walk in off the street to discover their new favorite thing.  It encourages new blood, and crossover to other scenes. It makes subculture thrive. It’s a movement!

See the list of parties at The Furclub survey.  Any party that gives a Q&A will get a featured article.  I found out about this one from a rare news notice of Austin TX’s Longhorn Furs. Organizer Whines shares an underground series that builds the kind I’m sure we’ll be seeing lots more of:

Austin Furry Dance series (2013- now)

____________________  

 

(Whines:) Great idea for putting this list together, what little I’d found out previously was just from checking regional forums, which is time-consuming. 🙂

Party name: 

The Austin furry dance is a continuing series of events that happen every 2-3 months. Each dance has had its own name–‘Maybe?’ ‘Do Not Look Into Laser With Remaining Eye’, ‘Foxing Days Until Xmas’, ‘Chick Rock’, etc. I guess the series is the Austin Furry Dance?

Show poster by Whines.

Show poster by Whines.

Who: Founder, promoter, staff, DJ’s or performers?

I (Whines) have pushed this along with lots of cooperation from the Austin community and my partner Corbeau. EJ Otter, the head of the University of Texas furry club has gotten us much bigger spaces over at the University for events in partnership with his club. His boyfriend Rheldar does a lot of the A/V work along with myself. Edgewise has been DJ’ing for us nearly since the beginning, sharing the duties with others including Kage and Corbeau.

What: Type of party, music, price, amenities, attendance?

These are dance-focused private parties, with invitations by referral so we can have some control. The musical style is deliberately diverse; there’s always club EDM (of course) but some 70/80/90’s, electroswing, or international thrown in. DJ’s with different styles are paired up to keep it changing.

Price has always been zero, with kind community members donating snacks/drinks.

We keep blower fans pointed at the dancefoor (SO wonderful in a fursuit!) and recently added a drying tree.

Attendance is usually in the 20-30 range although it’s been up near 50.

When: How often and how long? When established?

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October 16, 2015

EXCLUSIVE: Patreon launch announcement for Culturally F’d, with a new episode and preview!

by Patch O'Furr

In July, Culturally F’d was announced here with an episode list. It’s the Furry youtube series that asks:

Where does the love of anthropomorphics come from? How far back can we dig in history and mass media to really get to the bottom of it? Why does every culture across the face of the earth have a fascination with animal-people?

title_cardNow, host Arrkay shares the latest episode plus a sneak preview made EXCLUSIVELY for dogpatch.press: 

Hey DogPatch readers! Arrkay here with a special announcement from Culturally F’d.

Firstly, we have a new video all about Fursuiting and Drag Queens. The episode features footage from Howl Toronto in July when some friends and I took over the stage in full drag. In the episode we compare the kind of performances put on by Fursuiters and by Drag Queens to find how much they have in common.

(Note: This week’s video features copyright content due to the drag performances. Because of this, the video may not play in all countries or on all devices.)

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October 15, 2015

Life Changing Furries – Dawgtown and Wes Anderson animation – NEWSDUMP (10/15/15)

by Patch O'Furr

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

“Being a Furry can change your life”

It’s a feature for The Stranger in Seattle, sharing some touching personal stories from Rainfurrest.  (That’s a nice change from drama…) Writer Matt Baume previously wrote a pretty good piece about puppy play, including one standard poodle who “presents as fluffy and effeminate”.  (Elsewhere, I really enjoyed getting to know about poodle fursuiter Edward Fuzzypaws, and agree that they are super fancy and should be less rare in the furry scene.)  It’s not furry, but the SEA-PAH (Seattle Pups And Handlers) monthly social meet at The Cuff draws at least a few fursuiters.

Matt posted a video with more content at Reddit’s r/furry (it’s special to see a writer post their own news directly there.) It also came in as a tip from Vox Fox.

Dogpatch Press added to Furry Writer’s Guild as Associate Member.

Already on the “recommended reading” list, now granted the fearsome power to nominate and vote in the Coyotl Awards. This is partly thanks to hosting Fred Patten’s “What the Well-Read Furry Should Read”. (Gratitude to Poppa Bookworm for adding and formatting all those book covers!)

“At the Soda City Comic Con, who’s your alter ego?”

News announcement at The State shares a video they made with local furries. “Soda City Comic Con is the premiere pop culture event in South Carolina, bringing together the best in comics, toys, cosplay, gaming and artists that Columbia has ever seen!”

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October 14, 2015

Swallowtail and Sword, by H. Leighton Dickson – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Patch O'Furr

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

Swallowtail and SwordSwallowtail and Sword: The Scholar’s Book of Story and Song, by H. Leighton Dickson
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, April 2015, trade paperback $11.99 (255 pages), Kindle $2.99.

This is an interlude, because it comes after Book 3, Songs in the Year of the Cat, the last published, but before Book 4, Bones in the Year of the Dragon, which has not been published yet.

“Before there was a Shogun, before there was a Journey, there was a Story.

Not just one story, but many. Stories of myth and legend and Ancestors; of horses and lions and mountains and monkeys. Of life and death and those in between and how you can see them if only you try. If you sit quietly and listen deeply, you might hear something you’ve never heard before. You might know something you’ve never known and you might understand how we came to be the people we are. It is elusive, I grant you. Cats are, after all, an inscrutable people.” (p. 7)

So begins Swallowtail and Sword: The Scholar’s Book of Story and Song. With stories, but there are also songs. And steel. “Much steel, for cats are warriors and our armies are the envy of the world.” (p. 8) And tea. And much more. If you have read Books 1-3 of Tails of the Upper Kingdom (and if you haven’t, why haven’t you?), you will know of that far-future Oriental Empire, and of some of its politics and its expeditions to the far West and its discovery that humans still exist. And are preparing to reclaim the world.

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October 13, 2015

One Town, Two Cons: Let’s compare and ask organizers about Furry community growth.

by Patch O'Furr

Thanks for help from Poppa Bookworm, and tips from Arrkay (Culturally F’ed) and Fuzzwolf (FurPlanet.) 

The newly established PAWcon is coming up on October 30 – in the same place as Further Confusion.  It made me raise a topic: 

In the 90’s, ConFurence was THE convention for all furries worldwide.  26 years after ConFurence 0 broke ground, the subculture has gained enough steam for some local populations to get multiple cons.  It’s a sign of a healthy community.  Areas or cities like that make great examples to learn from.  Do they succeed?  What does it say about fan support, and competition or cooperation to grow our awesome fandom?

Five places came to mind:

  • San Jose, CA (Further Confusion and PAWcon, since 2014)
  • Columbus, OH (Morphicon and Furlaxation, in 2012-2014)
  • Toronto (Camp Feral! and Furnal Equinox, since 2010)
  • Boston, MA (Maltese Fur Con and Anthro New England, in 2014)
  • Pittsburgh, PA (Anthrocon and Western Pennsylvania Furry Weekend)

Healthy growth can bring a downside.  Cons are growing large and well-attended enough to have critical security concerns.  This month, Oklacon and Rainfurrest both announced dramatic cancelations due to misbehavior.  Bad faith can get between organizers and their venues, and that gets bigger than internal fandom drama.  However, it’s also natural for problems to grow when a population does.  Be optimistic with a con every week, some place in the world.

Consider the hard work it takes to organize a con, and draw people to fly in from far away.  Organizing could be a paid profession.  Furries are lucky and loveable because theirs come from volunteering.  This brings a risk of burnout and decline.  It’s important to understand how and why.  The decline of ConFurence coincided with the start of Further Confusion, which may have unintentionally divided the pool of supporters.  16 years after ConFurence 10 ended, multi-con locations can show examples for how to sustain what we love.

There’s much more than conventions in the hard-to-measure Furry subculture.  They can only draw some members.  But they can be considered to lead it’s growth.  Con-goers, fursuiters, and fursuiting con-goers may be the most committed members of furry social life.  They spend the tourist dollars that float Furry’s best public profile.  Anthrocon’s $7 million tourism draw has earned more and more enthusiastic coverage.  In 2015, it achieved a new benchmark, with their first public parade that was cheered on by 5,000 regular people of Pittsburgh.  This is what the public sees.

Let’s look for insight from organizers.  Dogpatch Press sent questions to ten cons in five locations:

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