Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Tag: history

August 24, 2023

Gamepopper releases book Furtannia: The History of the Furry Fandom in the United Kingdom

by Dogpatch Press Staff

Hello, I’m Gamepopper, a British furry author of the newly released book Furtannia: The History of the Furry Fandom in the United Kingdom. Buy it at the link from Uncle Bear Publishing.

I’ve mentioned this book on Dogpatch Press in a guest article calling for preserving the furry fandom’s history, when it was under the (admittingly cheeky) working title of Furry Kingdom. This book tells a long and multi-faceted account of that history, but this time from the perspective of British furries.

The origins of the modern furry phenomenon can be traced to America — specifically, California — and it eventually grew and spread to other countries. The United Kingdom was one of the first places outside the United States to embrace Furry, but it wasn’t just a new discovery; a lot of media that inspired the modern-day fandom originated in England.

Furtannia covers that growth from the first housecons and furmeets in the UK, to conventions like ConFuzzled, and how they differ from American furcons. Along the way it covers unique British Furry media and events.

That growth was influenced by California fandom reaching towards an international presence almost since the beginning. In 1987, Mark Merlino, Rod O’Riley, and a few American fans hosted a furry hotel party in Brighton during the 45th World Science Fiction Convention. A handful of British science fiction and comic book fans travelled to the United States or purchased imported American comics, discovered the fandom, and kept in touch with each other.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a comment
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.

Read the rest of this entry »

5 comments
March 30, 2018

Fursuit History 2: Skin Parts

by Arrkay

Guest post by Arrkay from Culturally F’d, the furry youtube channel. See their tag on Dogpatch Press for more.

It’s #FursuitFriday which means twitter floods with pictures of our fluffy creations. It’s also the time for us at Culturally F’d and Dogpatch to look back at some Fursuit History. Make sure to catch up on Part 1: Masks and start your own exploration of animal costume performance with Culturally F’d.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a comment
February 16, 2018

Fursuiting: A History – a video miniseries by Culturally F’d.

by Arrkay

Guest post by Arrkay from Culturally F’d, the furry youtube channel. See their tag on Dogpatch Press for more.

Yesterday we posted a sneak peek of our multi-part miniseries. It looks at animal-costume history from the basics of the mask, theatrical outfits, Hollywood rubber-suits, fandom cosplay, and our very own fuzzy army of unique performers.

Now here’s Part 1: Masks. This video explores the very idea of the mask itself and its ancient origins. Of course we focus on animal-masks, since we’re talking about Fursuit History, not just costuming in general.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a comment
July 12, 2017

Furry Fandom, by Wikipedians – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

Furry Fandom, by Wikipedians. Illustrated.
Limburg an der Lahn, Germany, PediaPress, —–, trade paperback $21.65 ([v +] 258 pages).

Furry Fandom is supposedly an “all that you want to know” book about furry fandom, but with a major flaw. It’s only current to around 2010. It’s a fine book at 258 well-indexed pages and with 46 illustrations (mostly photographs) to give to a non-furry who asks what furry fandom is all about. It presents a complete overview. But the fandom has grown and otherwise changed so much since 2010 that anyone becoming a furry fan today will need more information to be brought up to date.

PediaPress is a modern print-on-demand publisher in a suburb of Mainz, Germany that is closely associated with Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia, “PediaPress was established to provide an online service that enabled Web users to create customized books from wiki content, an example of web-to-print technology.” Anyone can request a book on any subject, and “the Wikipedians” will collate all the information on that subject spread throughout “the over 4 million articles on Wikipedia in English alone” into a handy book – officially.

This Furry Fandom book does not have any publication date other than a statement that this copy was printed on April 24, 2017 at 23:51 UTC. But that does not mean the book has all Wikipedia’s information on furry fandom up to April 2017. It states that Anthrocon was held from 1997 to 2009. EuroFurence and Further Confusion are covered up to 2010. The Ursa Major Awards were presented from 2001 to 2008. (p. 44) The Furry Writers’ Guild and its Cóyotl Award, created in 2010 and 2011, are not mentioned. A four-page list of active furry conventions does not include anything after November 2010. The list of furry comic strips and webcomics includes some titles that have been discontinued since 2010 and does not include some that have become major since then. There is no section on furry specialty publishers, although Sofawolf Press is briefly mentioned – FurPlanet and Rabbit Valley are not. Dr. Kathy Gerbasi and the Anthropomorphic Research Project are not mentioned.

Read the rest of this entry »

1 comment
February 7, 2017

Q&A with Sherilyn Connelly, author of Ponyville Confidential: the History and Culture of My Little Pony, 1981-2016.

by Patch O'Furr

ponyvilleRecently, I posted “The history of My Little Pony and thoughts about growing up with cartoons” to prepare for chat with Sherilyn Connelly.  Sherilyn is a journalist local to the San Francisco Bay Area Furries. (She has given them notice in publications like SF Weekly.) Her first book is out this April: Ponyville Confidential, a pop culture history of the My Little Pony media empire. (Please like the book’s Facebook page!)

Hi Sherilyn, thanks for talking about Ponyville Confidential!  Let me start by asking – who needs to read it? Will it be manely for fans?  Will there be parts to tempt furry readers?

“Manely!” I see what you did there. Obviously everypony needs to read it, and it’s by no means intended just for My Little Pony fans; I hope that people who are interested in pop-culture history in general will give it a look as well. And there are many references to the Furry fandom, including shout-outs to Frolic, Further Confusion, and Anthrocon.

I know you as a committed, active fan who comes to Furry events and writes journalism about them (and movies, and more.) Can you give a brief intro about your background and writing?

I’ve wanted to be a writer ever since I was old enough to want to be anything at all. I started writing professionally for SF Weekly in 2011 — within a few months when I started grad school and began watching My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, so it was a momentous year in retrospect — and wrote quite a lot about the the local Furry scene at the time. I began contributing film reviews to the Village Voice in 2012, and became the Weekly‘s permanent film critic in January 2013.

I hear this is your first book, congrats – how excited are you? Would anything surprise you about how it might be received?

Read the rest of this entry »

2 comments
February 10, 2016

New episodes from Culturally F’d: Twisted Tempting Furry Demons!

by Patch O'Furr

If culturallyfdyou’re not reading Dogpatch Press, you should be watching Culturally F’d!  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?

Here’s what’s been going on with Culturally F’d in the past month:

Episode 20: Tempting St. Anthony

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a comment
November 12, 2015

New episodes from Culturally F’d reveal wicked cryptids and fab vocab.

by Patch O'Furr

If you’re not reading Dogpatch Press, you should be watching Culturally F’d!  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_card

Series host Arrkay sent these new episode updates:

Furry Lingo: Part 1

Read the rest of this entry »

1 comment
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.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a comment
September 29, 2015

Fred Patten Presents – his articles about Furry publishing, animation, and history.

by Patch O'Furr

Discussion of the history of furry fandom with Fred Patten, at ConFURence 9.

Fred Patten is the most valued contributor at Dogpatch Press.  He came here during editor down time at Flayrah, seeking a stable place for his reviews and history articles.  (For those who aren’t acquainted with Fred’s impressive resume as a fan historian and curator, he has spent a lot of the recent decade in a convalescent hospital.  Writing is a major benefit to his life and a good cause to support.)

The “Fred Patten” tag has everything he has contributed here.  

Without Fred’s guest posts, there would be no five day a week schedule here.  Assisting and formatting his articles takes a lot of work, and five days a week makes a very demanding pace.  But I think the promise of regular content should inspire anyone who contributes.  It makes this the most active “Furry News” source.  It’s all non-profit, so thank Fred for doing what few people can do without being paid – and volunteer helper Poppa Bookworm – and (ahem) anyone else who helps, reads, shares or comments to make this a community thing.

Fred recently shared a bibliography listing an incredible abundance of his book reviews.  It covers years of writing and hundreds of posts.  At the very least, it’s worth browsing to get an idea about the variety of Furry published work.

“What the Well Read Furry Should Read”: All of Fred’s book reviews at Dogpatch Press, Flayrah, and Anthro magazine.

The list doesn’t include Fred’s other amazing articles that aren’t book reviews.  Here’s everything else.  You don’t want to miss these, if you’re interested in learning about anthropomorphic art, how furries came to be, and what they do and like.

FURRY PUBLISHING, ANIMATION, AND HISTORY:

Read the rest of this entry »

1 comment