Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Tag: furry

Furries return to the 2022 San Francisco Pride parade

by Patch O'Furr

Coming Sunday June 26, 2022

The SF Bay Area has the world’s most dense population of furries, but back in 2012, SF Pride didn’t have activities for the love of anthropomorphic animals. They had a parade contingent in 2002-2005, but it needed help to start again. (See a 2002 video or the Pride tag for more history.) 

Whose job is it to make it happen? Everyone’s. In 2012-2019 I was one of the organizers for award-winning floats in the parade, with hundreds of supporters and members. In 2019 (the second year to get an award) we won “Absolutely Outrageous” out of more than 200 parade contingents. The parade was interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, but finally, it’s here again.

The Nor Cal Furries are going this weekend with a new trailer, built by @Zoren and @MrDisk0Dog and funded by community donations and volunteers to give everyone an experience to remember. (Funds still accepted, anything extra will pay forward.) Here’s how great it was in 2019:

PARADE INFO FOR THE FURRY CONTINGENT:

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The 2021 Ursa Major Awards are open now and need your vote.

by Patch O'Furr

Furry fandom’s Ursa Major awards honor the best, most loved anthropomorphic creations of the past year (2021.) Vote now to help the community choose their favorite movies, art, books, news magazines, and more. You can vote until March 31.

The nominations in 14 categories have links to the content here, and you can also find it linked on their Twitter feed.

If you like seeing this collected and open for community feedback, share it on your personal feeds and tell your friends to vote!

This year’s nominees are…

Best Motion Picture
Live-action or animated feature-length movies.

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2 Days Left to Nominate for the Ursa Major Awards!

by Patch O'Furr

Furry fandom’s Ursa Major awards honor the best, most loved anthropomorphic creations of the past year (2021.) There’s just a short time to nominate what the public can vote on. Get yours in while you can. Movies, art, books, news magazines, and more… which ones will the community choose?

Nominate HERE for the Ursas, but don’t wait until it’s too late! February 12 is the deadline.

Volunteers run this. Please support them so they can make a community award possible.

Since 2001, these awards have been run with long hours of unpaid work. The volunteers would appreciate any support you can give to defray costs for a website, making and mailing awards, and more.

Categories:

  • Best Anthropomorphic Motion Picture
  • Best Anthropomorphic Dramatic Short Work
  • Best Anthropomorphic Dramatic Series
  • Best Anthropomorphic Novel
  • Best Anthropomorphic Short Fiction
  • Best Anthropomorphic Other Literary Work
  • Best Anthropomorphic Non-Fiction Work
  • Best Anthropomorphic Graphic Story
  • Best Anthropomorphic Comic Strip
  • Best Anthropomorphic Magazine
  • Best Anthropomorphic Published Illustration
  • Best Anthropomorphic Game
  • Best Anthropomorphic Website
  • Best Anthropomorphic Costume (Fursuit)

Like the article? These take hard work. For more free furry news, follow on Twitter or support not-for-profit Dogpatch Press on PatreonWant to get involved? Try these subreddits: r/furrydiscuss for news or r/waginheaven for the best of the community. Or send guest writing here. (Content Policy.)

The Furry Music Anthology releases “On The Bright Side: The Anthrology Vol. III” with 29 artists

by Patch O'Furr

The Furry Music Anthology is uniting musicians, just like other furry artists, to share their work with one collective platform. (Join them on FurAffinity and Twitter.) It launched with “Anthrology Vol. 1: A Song of Your Sona“ sharing the work of 13 musicians. The sequel, “New Horizons: The Anthrology Vol. II” shared work from 15 musicians. Now 29 are contributing to a new release.

Get it here: https://furrymusicanthology.bandcamp.com/album/new-horizons (Name your price!)

Project founder Trayce the Protogen writes:

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Zoosadist investigation: Matthew “Cupid” Grabowsky harasses investigator, gets immediately slapped with child porn conviction

by Patch O'Furr

Content warning for animal abuse and sexual violence. 

In September 2021, Washington furry fan Matthew “Cupid” Grabowsky was convicted for a new charge of child porn possession. He faces up to 20 years in jail. This revives news of his 2019 animal cruelty conviction, which drew protest about his continued presence in the furry fan community. We’ll look into how Cupid was convicted this time, but first let’s look at how this supports a deeper story about a crime ring he was in.

NEW CORROBORATION: 2019 reporting by Dogpatch Press featured Cupid in the headline, and claimed a deeper story.

The 2019 report here covered a big leak of a furry/zoophile crime ring for animal torture porn (zoosadism) and child abuse. Think movie serial-killer-like behavior. Hundreds of hours of investigation found a “matrix of corroboration”. Legal documents for Cupid’s new conviction add more evidence:

  • There’s new disclosure of serious crime predating August 2018; the same time period in the Dogpatch Press report.
  • Cupid’s 2019 conviction was a misdemeanor that let him off easy, indicating he gained a plea deal that let him come back and minimize his crime.
  • Cupid’s 2021 charge led to immediate conviction with a guilty plea. (That can happen from breaking terms of a deal, explaining why it came out now.)
  • The newly disclosed crime involved multiple child victims, even toddlers forced into sexual contact with animals.
  • Victim ID’s hinted in new court documents don’t match other known victims reported to law enforcement; more may keep coming out.

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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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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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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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Go vote for the 2020 Ursa Major Awards!

by Patch O'Furr

Cast your vote now for the 2020 Ursa Major Awards. Voting closes on March 31 for the 14 categories below. Every year, furry creators (and mainstream creations) are eligible for this popular vote. Which movies, art, books, news magazines, and more will the community choose as favorites?

When you’re done, please ask your friends to share and repost the link! It helps creations that deserve attention.

Since 2001, these awards have been run with hard work by volunteers. They would appreciate any support you can give to defray costs for a website, making and mailing awards, and more. (paypal@ursamajorawards.org)

The 2020 Nominees: 

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A cheesy soundtrack for a furry pizza party

by Patch O'Furr

If you love pizza and furries, VOTE HERE for the Ursa Major Awards! Support furry creators from March 1-31. Love is the best topping.

There is 1970’s country music about pizza. I was obsessed when I found it. I must have played it 7 times in a row. It’s so joyful, who hasn’t inhaled steam from a fresh pizza in the car and been full of longing? I’m pie-ning for some now.

Is there other country music like that? Most of what’s around these days is about trucks and things that don’t fit lyrics about spending $3.99 for a 16-incher because you’re not a penny pincher.

I have no idea when it will be safe to have furry meets again, but when it is, there’s definitely going to be a furry pizza party at my place. It would be picking up where we left off. That was the last thing that happened here before the covid lockdown, after Further Confusion 2020. We only got one started and it was supposed to be regular. Hosting 15 local furries was a nice turnout for a small private low-key night. Just add pupperoni.

Have any plans yourself?

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