Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Tag: furry

July 29, 2015

Furry internet history, tragic accident takes RedSavage and Milofox. NEWSDUMP (7/29/15)

by Patch O'Furr

Tips: patch.ofurr@gmail.com. 

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.  Guest posts welcome. “Local correspondents” wanted to talk about your local networks. 

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Media and Fandom news.

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New from “Culturally F’d”: how the 1990’s internet made a Furry phenomenon.

I highly endorse this Youtube series, which investigates everything this blog is for!  Host blackbird, Arrkay, sent this.

(Arrkay:) “This week we are “Ctrl:F’d.” Culturally F’d looks at furries and the history of the internet.

The episode was later than expected for 2 reasons: 1) I was hosting a Drag Party (Howl Toronto‘s “Fierceness Party”,) where I recorded footage to feature soon where we discuss the commonalities of fursuiting and drag queens. 2) It’s our longest episode so far, and will probably be the longest of the season!

As Michael from VSauce recently pointed out, on the internet, no one know’s if you’re a dog. This meme was originally from the July 5, 1993 edition of the New Yorker. No group on the internet holds this adage more closely than furries.

MUDs, MUCKs, and early chat rooms made Furry visible in the first online communities of the 1980’s and 90’s. That happened before computers were widely accessible, and even before the mega-infrastructure of the internet was built.  This aspect of the fandom grew largely from colleges and universities, equipped with online connections and computers that were still far too expensive for home-use.

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July 28, 2015

Fursuiters were kings at Andrew WK’s Pizza Party in San Francisco.

by Patch O'Furr

Of course this happened in San Francisco – “Furry Mecca”. (Sorry, Pittsburgh… you can borrow that title for one weekend a year, but you have to give it back.)

Andrew WK’s Pizza Party was planned for July 3.  Furries called up the venue, 1015 Folsom, and arranged to be part of the show.  The show managers went out of their way to accommodate fursuiters and help them change. There was a strong turnout for such an awesome happening.

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July 23, 2015

Thousand Tales; How We Won the Game, by Kris Schnee – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

Thousand Tales; How We Won the Game, by Kris Schnee.
North Charleston, SC, CreateSpace, June 2015, trade paperback $8.49 (2thousand45 pages), Kindle $2.99.

The chapters are years in which this takes place; from “2036: The Early Adopters” to “2040: Thousand Tales”.

The blurb is helpful. “The mad AI Ludo is taking over the Earth… but she just wants everyone to have fun.” But it’s not that simple.

Paul Kostakis is a high-school graduate who wants to go to college. However, in this regimented 2036, all youths are required to serve a government-approved social service to qualify for admission to higher education. Paul is assigned to a Green Communities Youth Initiative work camp across the country in Arizona, a shelter for the homeless and unemployable. Its coordinator is a friendly-appearing sadist who obviously intends to fail Paul. When he stops a madman with a gun from killing anyone in the cafeteria, she records Paul’s actions as “excessively violent”. When he tries to study for his college’s entrance exams, she wastes his time by ordering that he play an endless video game, supposedly to relax and socialize better.

Paul does so very reluctantly, but the Thousand Tales game turns out to be brand-new, controlled by an equally new Artificial Intelligence, Ludo. Ludo, appearing as a fantasy beautiful woman, intrigues Paul by tailoring an imaginary world to his specifications. “She” gradually reveals to him that she intends to follow her programming to help her players enjoy themselves, by immersing them in increasingly-complex fantasy worlds tailored to their desires; and she wants Paul to help recruit new players who need her aid. “In return for a few little favors, she’s offering ‘brain uploading’. She can fatally dice your brain, scan it, and recreate you in a virtual-reality heaven she controls. You can do anything in there: become a griffin, upgrade your mind, fall in love, or go mad.” (back-cover blurb)

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July 22, 2015

The Painted Cat, by Austen Crowder – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

The Painted Cat, by Austen Crowder.Painted-Cat-Thumbnail
Dallas, TX, Argyll Productions, April 2015, trade paperback $19.95 (273 pages), e-book $9.95.

“I started painting myself up to look like a toon for two reasons. First, I was bored and needed a new hobby during my summer break as a teacher. Second – and far more important, in my opinion – was that my friend Valerie thought I’d look good as a cat, and I had always wondered what could have been if I had turned toon like she did. That she brought all the supplies, prosthetics, and paint we could possibly have needed sort of sealed the deal.” (p. 9)

The Painted Cat is more like Gary K. Wolf’s 1981 novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, or Disney’s 1988 Who Framed Roger Rabbit movie based upon it, than the average anthropomorphic novel. It omits the Disney crazy comedy, but in this world, the toons – and they are called toons — are live cartoon animals, not anthropomorphized “real” animals, who are socially lower-class living among humans; plus those humans who turn themselves into toons with special paint and prosthetics – see the deleted “pig head” sequence from the Roger Rabbit movie. Janet Perch, the protagonist, straps on a cat tail very like the artificial fox tails on sale at every furry convention, and within moments it attaches itself to her spine and she can move it like any cat can do with its tail.

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July 20, 2015

Anthrocon Anthrocon Anthrocon! Fluffsplosion of hype. NEWSDUMP (7/20/15)

by Patch O'Furr

Tips: patch.ofurr@gmail.com. 

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.  Guest posts welcome. “Local correspondents” wanted to talk about your local networks.  

This week’s Newsdump: Everything Anthrocon!  There was SO MUCH of this news, and it was such a busy month, that I will be playing catch-up for a while with it… I’m not able to read all of these links.  Good job catching all this attention, AC!  Has there ever been this much?  Some of it is national (the Onion A.V. Club and NPR notice seems particularly cool.) It was quite a coup to parade outside on the Pittsburgh street for the first time.  5,000 regular public watchers came out to see the furries, and they went nuts for it.  I hope the crowd doubles in the future.  I’d love to interview Uncle Kage about the planning and reception. (Official Anthrocon wrapup report.)

Onion A.V. Club: Watch almost 1500 furries strut their stuff at this year’s Anthrocon.

The official count of members in the Anthrocon 2015 Fursuit Parade Group Photo is 1,460.  This reminded me of a neat aspect of the con.  All that show value!  These costumes represent so much investment… we could do a few estimates to figure out how much.  In a previous post, “$3 million sale raises furry auction topic”, I came up with an arbitrary $2,320.51 per fursuit represented in Anthrocon’s parade.  Multiply by the count of 1,460 members this year to reach a (rough guesstimate) value of $3,387,944.60 in fursuits.

NPR: The Furries Have Landed — And Pittsburgh Is Giving Them A Bear Hug.

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July 9, 2015

GeneStorm: City in the Sky, by Paul Kidd – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

GeneStorm: City in the Sky, by Paul Kidd
Raleigh, NC, Lulu.com/Perth, Western Australia, Kitsune Press, May 2015, trade paperback $26.37 (420 pages), Kindle $7.99.

genestorm_novel___out_now__by_patpahootie-d8u5qizThis is based upon Kidd’s own new GeneStorm role-playing game, which seems to be similar to TSR/Wizards of the Coast’s 1978 Gamma World RPG. Kidd wrote an authorized Gamma World paperback novel, the rollicking adventure Red Sails in the Fallout (Wizards of the Coast, July 2011), featuring Xoota, a mutated quoll-woman, and her partner Shaani, “a mutant albino lab rat with an enthusiasm for scientific research and a Pommy accent”. It was set in the Australian desert near where Kidd lives. (Perth, Western Australia. He was the first Guest of Honour at Perth furry fandom’s annual FurWAG convention.)

Somebody sniffed that they would never read a novel hacked out as a RPG merchandising spin-off. Your loss. Kidd writes fun furry adventures.

GeneStorm: City in the Sky is set in the Australian “weird-lands” 150 years after the GeneStorm plague has transformed the world entirely. Everyone is a mutated hybrid. The protagonist is Snapper, a female half-human, half-shark. She rides a giant cocatoo. (It sounds very similar to the real one at the Further Confusion 2001 exotic animal life-drawing session that kept squawking for attention, trying to upstage the white tiger. See the cover by Kalahari.) Other characters are a blend of human/fox/golden pheasant, human/kingfisher/cat, human/tortoise/god knows what:

“Snapper ate the salty dough, dunking it in a cup of brown onion gravy. “I met a toucan once. Sort of part cat, part bird.’ […] ‘Now she married a guy that was a sort of strawberry-dog hybrid. Well – their kid sort of stayed a cat toucan. But his feathers were al red and green strawberry colours. Pretty striking.’” (pgs. 64-65).

Some can only be described:

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July 7, 2015

Anthrocon is upon us – Fandom in China and Taiwan – Woof Washer – NEWSDUMP (7/7/15)

by Patch O'Furr

Headlines, links and little stories to make your tail wag.  Guest posts welcome. “Local correspondents” wanted to talk about your local networks. 

Tips: patch.ofurr@gmail.com. 

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In The Media

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cityshirt_0Brace yourselves for Anthrocon coverage.

“Inside the furries: they’re people too”– from WTAE news in Pennsylvania:

Pittsburgh has always been a welcoming, accepting city for this fandom, and here’s to hoping it continues for this year’s Anthrocon. If you happen to see one of these NORMAL people in incredible costumes walking the streets of Pittsburgh, don’t be afraid to say hello.

Ad campaign with “Furries” ad found in copywriter’s portfolio.

A few months ago, this article got thousands of views – Mainstream advertising: “More and more, Furries are being hinted at in marketing media!”  One of the ads for Mini in San Francisco had a provocative mention of Pride month and Furries. I didn’t know much of the context, until I found the entire campaign with brief comment from the writer .  Many ads are in it, but he uses the Furries one as cover image.  He captioned it:  “Staying current on local events is key to showcasing our understanding of SF.”  It would have been amusing to hear the copywriter’s pitch.  I sent a few questions about the reaction, but sadly he didn’t reply. It’s good to know that furries have street cred.

Nasty little mockery of “furries” on Orange Is The New Black TV show.

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July 6, 2015

San Francisco Pride, gay marriage, and historic happenings in Furry Mecca.

by Patch O'Furr

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Billet Sheltie – pic by Eric Campbell.

Gay marriage just became legal across the USA.  Even if you have no plan to get one, it’s a big deal.  People of a few generations ago thought we’d have flying cars before this happened.  The writer of “Furry Force” says:

In San Francisco, the news hit right at “gay christmas”.  The city was getting ready for Pride, “the largest gathering of LGBT people and allies in the nation.”

It was already going to be one whopper of a party. But with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry fresh off the presses, Sunday’s Pride Parade in San Francisco became a rainbow-colored, joyous celebration for the ages.

The whole country was involved. The Chief of Police called it “the largest Pride celebration ever.”  Being mainstream was a big topic. On a subcultural level, the excitement spread among “the world’s greatest concentration of furries per square mile.” Furries were in the parade in 2005, returning in 2014 and 2015.

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Pic by Vincent

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July 3, 2015

The Echoes of Those Before, by James Daniel Ross – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

The Echoes of Those Before, by James Daniel Ross. Illustrated by Josh Parise.
Clairton, PA, Copper Fox Books, May 2015, trade paperback $11.99 ([3 +] 256 pages), Kindle $2.99.

echoes-cover-half“In a broken world, in a broken land, there lay the shards of a kingdom. Near the center of that lost kingdom, protected by mountains, there lay a vale; along the river resided the five villages of the Fox Folk: Iceriver in the cleft of the hills where sun rarely shone; Oxbow, where the fishing was best even if done through the ice; Rocklake, where lived the steaming mud pits and the elder, where matters of law were discussed; Springvale at the entrance to the vale where the merchants and craftsmen met incoming caravans, and Sunrise, high on the slopes.

It was normally a peaceful, happy place among the low, rolling hills and tall, stately trees. Normally happy, but not today. Today they were losing one of their own.” (p. 4)

The Prologue and the first chapter introduce the main characters, Iam the white-furred Fox and Maverus the black-furred (shown on the cover by Christina Yoder) of the Fox Folk. They also establish that the Fox Folk are not the only Animal Folk, and that they have counterparts among the regular animals.

“Before the fire, stood the tall, gaunt form of the elder.   He was not a Fox, but a Drake. Some whispered he was a dragon, but he stood only just taller than they, and never breathed fire. He blinked inscrutable eyes set in a pebbly, gray reptilian face, tasted the air with a long, forked tongue, and adjusted his robes for more warmth.” (p. 6)

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July 1, 2015

It’s the “Idea Channel” for furries – Culturally F’d on Youtube.

by Patch O'Furr

Sometimes the Dogpatch Press tip account gets extra cool messages.  Here’s what new friend Arrkay sent:

We here love what you guys post online and what your content does for the fandom, so we hope you’ll take some time to check out what we’re doing!

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?

Arrkay got me excited to know more. The show summaries are gold… (everything I’d love to expose here.)  Let him explain it in his words:title_card

An all new Furry YouTube show has come on the scene: Culturally F’d.  

Culturally F’d explores the furries of the past and present, climbing the ladder of history through mass media in all the different ways humans have blended the properties of man and animal, and why. From Cave Paintings to Comic Books, and everything in between. Culturally F’d is an exploration of what makes everyone just a little bit furry, and what makes furries especially furry.

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