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The Passage Series, by John J. Sanders – Book Review by Fred Patten

October 16, 2018, 8:00 am
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Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

The Passage series.

Rites of Passage, by John J. Sanders.
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, September 2016, trade paperback, $11.00 (viii + 257 pages), Kindle $1.99.

City of Passage, by John J. Sanders.
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, June 2017, trade paperback, $12.00 (v + 277 pages), Kindle $2.99.

Voices of Passage, by John J. Sanders.
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, September 2017, trade paperback, $14.00 (vii + 326 pages), Kindle $3.99.

The Passage trilogy is set on Earth in the far future when humanity is turning much of it over to evolved AIs and new anthropomorphic animal clans that live like the pre-industrial native Americans.

Rites of Passage begins with the Otokononeko, the clans of the evolved lions and house cats living in the Great Sequoia Forests of West Coast North America. There are several offhand references to the humans, in San Francisco, Fresno, and other West Coast North American cities, but they are mostly offstage (at first).

“She dreamed of the dancing, songs sung, and stories told around the large fire. Dohi Aleutsi told a hilarious story about a young human male whose flying car was eaten by a Giant Sequoia tree. Her father and mother had undoubtedly heard the story before. Her father at one point in the story remarked that the car was still in the tree.” (p. 68)

The opening focus is upon Kaniko of the Otokononeko’s Anitsiskwa clan. The novel relates – or bogs down, for those who are not interested in such detail – the culture of the feline civilization in the Great Sequoia Forests. There are seven clans; the Anitsiskwa, Aniwaya, Anigilahi, Anikawi, Aniwodi, Anisahoni, and Anigalogewi. The symbol of the Anitsiskwa is bird claws; that of the Anikawi is antler-adorned leather vests; and so on. Kaniko’s parents and brothers are described, and the Otokononeko game of Stick and Rabbit is both described and played. It is around page 43 before the plot starts moving. Yet the first 42 pages are not boring. They are well-written and present the feline native civilization and characters’ personalities in great detail.

“She heard his crow calls and stopped her movement to listen to the forest. Jamel called two more times and silence. Her third-born brother, Domic, was much more patient and quiet. He was the kind of cat that would lie in wait for you to walk by before he’d pounce on you. She felt the summer breeze sweep through the trees and the tops swayed making the light in the forest dance. Still she waited for the slightest sound of movement. When she left her first-born brother on the ground, she had moved a little tangent to the point where she had heard his last call. She knew he had already moved, and she predicted he would move toward the inner parts of the arena. There the trees thinned until they opened up completely to form a loose circle around a small glade. Domic had long legs and could move faster when the trees were farther apart. They both knew this, and she knew he needed to get between him and the thinning trees,” (pgs. 18-19)

Kaniko, an Anitsiskwa adolescent (lioness), and her brothers Jamel and Domic are about to undergo their separate Rites of Passage to become Otokononeko adults. Just before the Rites, Kaniko meets Mathias, a wolf-humanoid. The felines have never seen a wolf before. Mathias has been injured in escaping whatever has captured him and his people, and the injury has given him amnesia. The Anitsiskwa decide that Kaniko’s Rite of Passage should be to go, with Mathias and with her two brothers, to find out who or what has “painfully” captured all the wolves and release them. Tomiroc and Sharri, two Otokononeko cousins from the Anikawi clan, join them.

They ask at the humans’ Institute of Synthetic Research in Fresno:

“His [Doctor Quinn] smile came back, and he asked, ‘So what can I do for you, do you need enhancements or modifications?’

A little surprised, Kaniko answered and gestured to Mathias. ‘No. We were hoping you could help us locate our friend’s origins. He has no memory of where he came from, only his name. There are no others like him near our home. His arrival is a mystery, and we thought, Fresno being the closest city, to start our search here.’

He looked at Mathias and back at the lioness that stood in front of him. He asked, ‘Hybrid or gene mod?’

Kaniko shrugged, ‘I… We don’t know. My parents and Mother Lacey thought he might be like us, a new species.’” (p. 124)

They learn that Mathias is a mod-human, a human-modified into a humanoid wolf at the genetic level – so he will breed true. That is an incredibly expensive process, and something that there should be a record of – unless it’s been deliberately hidden:

“Kaniko asked, ‘Why would anyone do this?’

Doctor Quinn answered, ‘That is the million credit question here. There are several fractured pieces of broken links in his DNA. They shouldn’t cause any problems, but it suggests that whatever was being done to him was not completed.’ He looked at the wolf and asked, ‘You’re incredibly strong, aren’t you?’

[…]

‘I think Mathias was purpose built.’

With her eyebrow whiskers raised, she asked, ‘For what?’

He took on a disturbed look and said, ‘It is spoken in some darker circles that the age-old practice of pitting animal against animal for amusement and gambling has taken on a whole new level of animal cruelty. It is reflective of what Lynn Leakey discovered in her own city more than fifteen years ago.’

Kaniko’s eyes widened, ‘You mean forcing children to fight in an arena?’

He nodded.” (p. 147)

Okay, that’s a major spoiler – that these three books aren’t about rescuing a clan of wolves, but about finding who has made a single wolf morph against his will. But that has to be revealed, or this review of the rest of Passages and all of City and Voices is going to be misleading. Also, Kaniko has taken this opportunity to ask Doctor Quinn if she and Mathias are compatible; if their children would be a blend of feline and lupine, or if they would be sterile. Now it looks like their children could be anything from feline and lupine to feline and human.

This takes the plot to about halfway through Rites of Passage. There are the conclusion of Rites, and all of City and Voices to go. There are plenty more surprises in the story. The three Passage novels (covers by Leanne Roach) are a fast-paced, ever-changing drama, with far more characters than the five Otokononeko and the one Ōkaminingen who set out to find Mathias’ origins.

– Fred Patten

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Zoosadism investigation: Capitalizing on abuse, and the ugly persistence of Kero.

October 19, 2018, 8:12 am
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Investigation continues – October 2018

Last month, furry fandom took a very dark turn. Zoosadism leaks: possibly the worst story to ever hit fandom was a mere introduction to the exposure of hidden networks for abuse and even snuff porn of animals.

The impact of it kicked up murky clouds of misinformation. After the shock, there was the usual speculation that comes with lesser dramas that usually die out in a week or two. There was smokescreening to hide evil that shocked even the most shady corners of the internet. There was rubbernecking, shit-stirring, evidence-tainting, and penny-chasing for views. And beneath it all was natural confusion. The ongoing story still defies explanation after a month, but on the good side, there’s significant work behind the scenes. That should have been done from the start to avoid a botched mess. Most of that work is for future updates. This update is mostly about public awareness.

One thing needs saying up front: you can definitely judge before a court does. “Innocent until proven guilty” is a legal standard to constrain government, not common sense about the evidence. There’s different standards between criminal court, civil court and society. (For example you don’t get a trial about fitness for employment, election, or safety with kids or animals.) Remember names like Casey Anthony, George Zimmerman, or OJ Simpson, and let a lawyer explain:

It’s not just about Kero, but apologism for Kero is the most obvious obstacle to progress.

If you followed so far and understand the evidence, then the name Kero may fill you with disgust and rage. Kero is a Youtuber exposed as a secret animal abuse fetishist, whose complicity got outsized notice due to his 100,000+ subscribers.

Kero had opportunity to own up or shut up. He didn’t. In the most self-serving way, he responded with cherrypicked and inconsistent denials, to brush this under the rug and keep his following, manipulate them to shield him, and even capitalize on notoriety built on puppy killing. I’ve never labeled anything obscene in my life, but making money from this is nothing less than obscene. Of course the info wasn’t leaked to target Kero and there’s a roster of worse offenders to account for. But his failure to at least relieve everyone from apologist bullshit makes him a poster guy for what’s wrong.

Kero dug a bottomless pit for himself, and the rest of fandom is on the edge. If you thought it was bad already, you haven’t seen anything yet.

The coming challenges, what to trust, and the cost of lying:

The original article laid out the challenges: to learn the size and shape of the network, who was complicit but not inside, who did content sharing but not creation, who was directly responsible for uploading toxic files, and who committed crimes.

Higher powers than fandom are working on that now. I’m lucky to see exclusive info that’s only for their eyes. However it’s still a fandom story. Investigation is relying on a few good furries, and their work will continue when this is done. Laws don’t have absolute power to handle the extent of it. That’s obvious in the way animal cruelty content is more-or-less legal to possess (which is how networks for it wormed in to fandom).

What’s coming out is more than one network or kind of activity, but many that overlap. It starts with fetish content where sharers may consider themselves harmless, but they’ll have to disentangle themselves from those who aren’t (blame the offenders for that.) That overlaps with convicted sex offenders, multiple open crime cases, and even clues about unsolved crimes only known by a trail of victims. There’s drug trafficking, some of it used to sedate animals before doing abuse. Besides animals, this involves children. At least there’s little sign of power corruption so far, besides abusers just seeking thrills behind anonymity.

Finding the truth is the goal. Readers should beware of sources with agendas (including just trashing furries shotgun-style for fun). Beware of cooked up Pizzagate-style conspiracy theories, dismissal with the words “drama” or “mobs”, or debates in favor of Kero. (The benefit of the doubt died when he lied.) I won’t favor anyone and don’t care about personal cost like losing friends for sharing the truth.

If you watch horror movies for Halloween, could you stand seeing it for real? I was warned about the evidence: “There’s a picture in there I’d call ‘Mortal Kombat Finishing Move'”.  It’s almost funny except this isn’t a movie or a game. It also isn’t about science, euthanization, hunting or butchering for meat, or only a frozen photo. It’s about the experience of sadistic fun with crying, struggle and brutal annhilation of a weaker being that could be a family member if it had the chance. A photo of that looks like animal remains, but it means more. It stands for the killing of good faith in a community based on believing and trusting that members love one thing so strongly, they even see each other being the animal. If someone does that to an animal, they’re morally doing it to you.

If people settle for apathy and lies about this, that’s how the fandom will die for real. At least the part that lets this go and accepts complicity.

A deeper look at how this came out – Kero lied about it, and then a video of his abused dog came out.

As above videos covered, the evidence wasn’t leaked by furry-haters.  Kero wasn’t the target. It’s logistically unrealistic to have faked the huge volume of chat logs. Messages from Kero match his user ID on the Telegram server (which can’t be hacked or edited on local devices in HTML or screenshots). They had unique photos found nowhere else. And multiple sources close to the story indicate that accounts weren’t hacked with messages faked, they were just exported.

There’s independent confirmation. I received a screen of text messages with the mother of chat user Levi Simmons/”SnakeThing” from the texter. They knew SnakeThing granted access to his account where existing messages were exported from. The login was given to fellow chat member EliteKnight, and gained from him by the leaker. EliteKnight posted an apology and admitted his involvement was real.

Another source comes from my chat with a partner of another group member, who tacitly authenticates their involvement by excusing it as a setup to get police involved. And an independent zoophile group admin confirmed they knew Kero was involved for a long time.

Now look again at a video from Kothorix about his interview with Kero and the actual interview log, where Kero switches course with multiple lies. He pretends he never spoke to SnakeThing but then admits he did.  He says he was hacked but admits he misled his entire fanbase and gave them an active sessions screenshot he found on the web. He claims he only liked feral art (which was only 3 images) instead of hundreds of necro/zoo/abuse images that were shared.

Then Kero says “I have never harmed an animal or had sex with one.” A video of his dog being molested is held by investigators, with stills released for proof.

After all this, why is Kero trying to come back? And why is he making MORE MONEY than before?

You might be amazed to hear this. I found a conversation by the furry fandom fringe of alt-furries, that gives a pretty consistent opinion of what’s going on. (Let’s avoid asking if there will ever be such self-awareness about that source itself…)

Even a broken clock is right twice a day:

Kero’s Patreon lost users over two weeks following the original leaks. (I’m told that reaching 100,000 Youtube subscribers is about the minimal level where someone might go full-time as a video maker. He only recently hit that level, and likely depends on the income).

Then the money went up. He appears to be making private videos just for his Patrons. Is there any better example for selling your soul?

Kero’s current Patrons

A Patreon supporter list was pulled from the unlisted video: “How to become a meme” that Kero made in the weeks after the Zoosadism leaks.

Below are some accounts matched to these names. Some may not be up to date with what’s going on. People who want to help can contact them with reasonable questions. Link this update and ask, do they support complicity with animal abuse, and could they please consider helping to fix this problem?

More: TragicCat? ZombyWoof Mischief? Brian Murphy? DynasRa? Viktor Lozano? Nathan Camatter Adams? Christopher Cole Wuff? Casandra Wagner? Shayne Coddington? Storm the Wolf? TheVeganWerewolf? Parker Sawyer Alan? GraymuzzleWolfpaw? Cilo Fox? Cupid Fley? GoldHusky? GIBSON THE FOX? Greyson? Nobody Important? Ratchet? Biofox? Aureus Jackal? Rob B ModjaFur? Lilly Justice Fox?

Q&A with investigation team “Furvengers” about Kero’s complicity – how bad did it get?

In-progress investigation indicates that Levi Simmons/SnakeThing began forming Telegram chat groups to gather users of Animals Dark Paradise. ADP is “a hidden forum where violent and perverted people upload videos in which they rape, torture and kill animals for their sexual pleasure.” I think this was a darkweb site needing a TOR connection for access.

Reddit has a post about ADP discussing why other networks may have been wanted – perhaps to evade surveillance. But more likely it was so ADP users could meet to create new animal abuse content, consistent with videos found in the leaks. One of those relationships happened with a big user of ADP, Illone, who became Kero’s boyfriend before his death by heroin. Illone was posthumously renamed “Colwyn Collie” (a name with no history), probably so Kero could cover up his ADP history.

Levi/SnakeThing was a main connection for Telegram groups he made for this including “BBB” (Beasty Beast Beasts).  It looks like Kero was a lower-level member, but aware, complicit, and concealing it while coming in from other groups. The BBB chat logs may be exclusive evidence (I’m unsure if they leaked.) I asked an investigator to supply and explain screenshots of Kero’s activity. This isn’t easy because evidence is still being traced, and the source of leaks appears to have sorted evidence to focus on some users that omits others.

Kero’s timeframe in the BBB group appears between December 2016 to 1st of February 2017. Then from 11th of February to 14th of February.

1) This screen is meant to show Kero is looking at rape content? Is there proof he knows it’s more than RP in this screen?

Date: 18th of December, 2016. This image was meant to show Kero’s earliest known joining of the group. This join was shortly after the group was nuked, thus it’s not certain whether Kero was in the group before this date. I’ve provided other files below that shows that Kero knew the others were inflicting pain, and not merely roleplaying.

2) Feb 11, 2017 – Kero is asking to be back in to the chat with rough stuff and necro. It looks like the second screen confirms he did join immediately. When did he leave?

New evidence I found shows him leaving on the 14th of February, since rejoining on the 11th.

3) Crazyotter is forwarding in messages made prior to January 2018, do those show Kero is trying to win his confidence to talk about rough animal abuse, and SnakeThing is confirming he used to be in BBB and is trusted as a fellow zoosadist? Does this help bracket the time he was in the group? 

These logs were from the 13th of January 2018, the same date as the forwarded messages. It falls outside the time Kero was in the group, as far as I’m aware. My original timebracket is supported by SnakeThing referring to him as an ‘old member.’

4) Is this only showing Kero knows SnakeThing is admin of the BBB chat, or something more?  Kero doesn’t know what BBB means in here… does this show groups were nuked or reformed in multiple versions for same users?

Date: 17th of July, 2017. This was to show more that SnakeThing was the admin of BBB than Kero’s involvement. I think Kero doesn’t know BBB here because the group was never referenced by the acronym ‘BBB’ between Snake and Kero prior.

5) When Kero says he is “a little broken,” that’s about the death of Illone right? It shows Kero associating with people he knows are zoosadists? Why does he say no Z talk… perhaps he’s separating his regular account from it but he knows what they do and is keeping quiet?

Date: 23rd of July, 2018. This conversation was related to Illone’s death. This is meant to show that Kero and Illone knew other zoosadists in the group, eg ‘CrazyOtter’. I think the ‘No Z content’ is a combination of Kero’s security concern, and his emotional state at the time.

6) Does this show Kero has access to SnakeThings video he made of raping a drugged puppy, making it bleed and breaking its teeth?  Is there proof Kero received it?

Date: 18th of March, 2017. This was meant to show the form of content shared on BBB. This was posted outside of Kero’s known timeframe within BBB.

7) This shows that RLC = Real Life Cub, AKA child pornography. Is there any proof Kero received this?

These messages fall outside Kero’s timeframe, and there’s nothing to show that he knew about the CP distribution. The timeframe, as well as his reactions to the content, shows he knew damn well about the zoosadist content shared.

8) These additional screens are included to show that Kero knew the others were inflicting pain, and not merely roleplaying. It looks like Kero was a lower-level member, but aware, complicit, and concealing this while leaving the group.

The disgrace of complicity, and what a healthy fandom does.

Watch for updates on happenings with this story outside of fandom. At some point that will end, but the question of what kind of fandom you want won’t.

Fandom is like a sandbox where you build it to be like you want. Furries build a community that brings amazing benefits to members and collects millions for charities. They’re good people, except when a few aren’t. Creativity has no limits here. Of course it’s hard to limit bad things too. When they’re uncovered, it can be like drawing a line on the beach. Apathy washes it away and the sands of forgetfulness cover up what was exposed.

There’s an ocean of difference between loving cartoon animal art, and doing cruelty to animals. If one says “well I only watched someone else’s, but that wasn’t mine”, it’s still generating demand. “Guilt by association” is only unfair to people who aren’t conscious about it. Complicity is the word for people who are. There’s no innocence for joining or supporting networks for abuse.

The abusers in this story were a tiny group that wanted to stay hidden. Transparency depends on refusing to accept excuses, giving no benefit of the doubt when it isn’t deserved, drawing a line and making it stick.

Kero is complicit. He denies it and even capitalizes on the attention. Paying him is part of the problem. If it continues, fandom will be a platform where abusers use it freely and even prosper. Progress depends on ending dishonesty.

74 of Kero’s Patrons haven’t understood the news yet. Give them a helping paw.

TAKE ACTION – please share this story to anyone who stands with complicity in animal abuse.

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Goku’s Furban Exploration goes to inner city Baltimore and Fort Armistead.

October 22, 2018, 8:00 am
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Here’s a sequel to Fursuit photography from the urban jungle: Goku’s Furban Exploration.

Years ago in the Rust Belt, my friend liked exploring decommissioned grain silos and factories of the area. He took me to climb an eight story brewery that closed in the 1980’s. The entrance was a hole in a fence and the inside was covered in spraycan murals, making an unauthorized art gallery. (Hey furry artists, if you’ve done such work, show me!) The stairs were dismantled for the first few floors. Could we climb up on the conveyer belt that used to scoop grain? No, but there was a fire escape with most of the steps still hanging on. Most. The upper floors had stories-tall fermenting vats and a movie worthy view. It made quite an impression to see the afterlife of a place that wasn’t supposed to have one. The place was gone soon afterwards, with a demolition party where people on the street watched it come down. It was an experience to remember.

Creativity in fursuiting gets boosted when you stage it in exciting locations. And for going bonkers with intense photography, street art and abandoned architecture are a class of their own. That’s why I loved the improbable idea of combining both. I put out a call to see if anyone was doing it, and Goku rose to the occasion. He sent in a new update. I love his work so much I’d love to meet him and help some day – and there will be more stories from him! (- Patch)

This story comes with a gallery of 40 photos, see the complete collection here. Photo credit: @seikoliz and @rclatter. Follow Goku: @KasigFuchsGoku

Good Afternoon Patch,

Here’s the latest installment of my Furban Exploration endeavors- I was hoping to have photos from my visit to the abandoned tunnels of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, but the photographer is taking his time processing them. In meantime, I have photos from inner city Baltimore. Then there’s a venture to Fort Armistead, a former Confederate fort turned into a public park in Glen Burnie, MD that has unfortunately fallen into disrepair. (I’ll make another trip to the fort with others in the near future since I was really amazed with the graffiti, catacombs, and feral cat haven nestled in the structure).

Late in September, I made a venture across to Maryland with my boyfriend to see two good friends of mine- Seiko and Clatterbuck. We have been friends for a few years- usually when Anthrocon would come around, we always found each other for a drink or a meal and a photoshoot. Seiko loved the angst from my fursona, so whenever we were at a con together, he always shared his expertise to accentuate my gruff fursonality. For urban exploration, Seiko was more than willing to share sites in his own backyard. Chatting about the abandoned tunnels of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, he was telling me about “graffiti alley”, an open canvas for talented graffiti artists that was part of an art display in Baltimore. Clatterbuck, a dear friend if mine and Seiko that helps with making superb photos, joined in.

My beau Danny and I arrived shortly before noon in Baltimore- a city I had always driven through, but never actually stopped for anything. The area where we would rendezvous with our photographers was bleak to say the least; a lot of business storefronts have not been open for a while. The only bustling businesses were one supermarket, a check cashing place, and a Dunkin’ Donuts that was way past its heyday. We met as I was parking my car, had a couple of cups of coffee, and I donned my fursuit on a main street and began to walk towards the gallery.

It was invigorating to get all types of attention as I did all sorts of poses in this small alley. I had artists at the gallery, one drug dealer, a couple of junkies, and a mother with her infant children all stop to ask questions (everything from if I was part of the exhibit, to if I was an undercover officer, to how much I was being paid to walk around in a costume… you name it). The alley was a great experience even though it was small.

We continued wandering the avenues of Baltimore to see if there was anything else. It led to laying on the walls, crawling on the sidewalk, and climbing into dumpsters (I have no fear, bleach and OxyClean work wonders on a white fursuit). Seeing what this area was like years ago was a high I needed to enjoy myself.

After 90 minutes I got back in street clothes while we discussed supper plans. We decided to drive to Fort Armistead, then get some good mid-Atlantic seafood. We drove for about 20 minutes away from Baltimore to Glen Burnie, into an area full of dingoes, boats, and vessels of all sizes.

We left our cars in a lot and took a short hike up a muddy trail to the fort, and just gazed at the graffiti, trying to get shots in as sunlight peered through the clouds. We had a few odd encounters- first were some burnout hippies living out of a late model Toyota RAV4. They were stoned, and they couldn’t believe a fox was walking around as they were listening to dubstep mixed with the Grateful Dead, with tall boys of Natty Ice in their hands. Then we came across some motorcyclists that looked like they were doing Initial D cosplay (or some similar anime), posing like I was in fursuit, with their crotch rockets and full gear.

I had to tread carefully as I walked around the fort- there were open holes that went a couple of stories deep (and I was all too eager to try and push my luck). Finally, as we circled back from our starting point near the hippies, we saw a small colony of feral cats living in this fort. The hippies stopped us, warning us that the cats weren’t the friendliest, so we just admired from a distance, and before the rain came, we packed our bags and went to supper.

The fish and chips were delicious, and I got to play every reincarnation of the Pac-Man franchise from 1980-1987. If I wasn’t so exhausted, I was tempted to ask the restaurant owners if they wouldn’t mind me suiting up for a few rounds with Ms. Pac-Man.

-Goku!

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

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The Moons of Barsk, by Lawrence M. Schoen – Book Review by Fred Patten

October 23, 2018, 8:00 am
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Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

The Moons of Barsk, by Lawrence M. Schoen.
NYC, A Tom Doherty Associates Book/Tor Books, August 2018, hardcover, $26.99 (430 [+ 1] pages), Kindle $13.99.

This is the sequel to Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard, reviewed here in 2016. Barsk has such an unusual and unique plot that you should really read it before The Moons of Barsk. Both have interstellar settings and are set in the far future when humanity is extinct and has been replaced by the descendants of uplifted animals.

You also need to read Barsk first because there is no synopsis here. The opening paragraph is:

“Amidst torrents of rain and blasts of lightning, Ryne stepped from his boat onto the shore of the last island, the place where his life ended. The mental beacon that had guided him across the open water faded away. Clarity replaced certainty, composed of equal parts confusion and anger. Flapping his ears against the downpour he muttered a phrase heard by his students at least once a tenday for the past six decades. ‘The math is all wrong!’” (p. 11)

But Chapter One is titled “Nothing But Lies”. Pizlo, Jorl, and Ryne are Fant, elephant-men of the planet Barsk, looking like a human with an elephant’s head; great flapping ears and a trunk. That’s not why Fant is reviled as abominations throughout the galaxy, though. Of the eighty-seven races (species) of the Galactic Alliance, the Fant are the only ones who are not furred. The Yaks, the Prairie Dogs, the Giant Anteaters, the Hares, the Sloths; all the others have respectable pelts. Only the Fant, divided into Elephs (uplifted Asian elephants) and Lox (African elephants), are disgustingly nude, with wrinkly gray, hairless skin, plus those giant flapping ears and the huge mobile nose.

The Fant are not only known for their hairlessness, though. Barsk is the only planet where the wonder drug koph can be found. Koph enables rare individuals who take it to access the nefshons of the dead and to become Speakers to the dead. “He could see nefshons; the subatomic particles of memory and personality would come at his call. If he summoned enough of them that had belonged to a dead person he could even talk to them.” (p. 22) Barsk is partially about some Fant, and the attempts of some individuals of the other races of the Alliance (notably Nonyx-Captain Selishta, a Cheetah) to get more koph.

Barsk focuses upon a few individual Fant on their planet, and a few members of the Alliance, notably Selista the Cheetah and Lirlowil the Otter, a Speaker, who are especially dependent upon koph. The Moons of Barsk is about Barsk’s relationship with the rest of the Alliance, focusing on why the Alliance wants to destroy Barsk.

Although The Moons of Barsk tells the adventures of the Fant Jorl and Pizlo (and his lover Rina), and to a lesser extent Ryne, the novel is most fascinating for its description of the society of Barsk:

“Most women’s homes in Keslo [“an island located near the northeastern portion of the western archipelago. It is home to Jorl ben Tral.” – (p. 426)] were enormous and tended to get bigger as generations of women and children branched and expanded. Rooms were added, porches enclosed, neighboring dwellings annexed and connected by inventive and oddly constructed temporary hallways that acquired permanence and extensions of their own. Back yards became internal patios, became parlors, became bedrooms and kitchens and even bathrooms depending on need and whim and available materials. This was the pattern in every Civilized Wood throughout both archipelagos, expansion and adaptation rather than contraction.” (p. 55)

It also presents more background. The Fant used to be spread throughout the Alliance. Eight hundred years earlier, Alliance politics resulted in all the Fant being relocated to Barsk.

What are The Moons of Barsk about?

“The portion of the firstborn generation of Barsk that established the Caudex based their entire existence on a single core belief: the Alliance wanted every last Eleph and Lox – every man, woman, and child – dead and gone. They believed the bureaucracy responsible for transporting all the galaxy’s Fant to Barsk had only enacted the beginning of a plan, putting them all in one spot to facilitate their eventual annihilation. Margda’s Compact had forged a truce of sorts, but it was at best a stopgap; it bought some time for the Fant, but not safety. The Caudex resolved to use that time to best advantage, to develop plans to ensure they survived at any cost.

Sometimes the Alliance’s contempt for anything and everything touched by Eleph or Lox worked to the advantage of the Fant. Eight hundred years earlier, when the first waves of resettlement had begun – before the tone of the relocation had grown darker – among the many ships ferrying Fant to their new home on Barsk were commercial spacecraft owned and operated by Fant concerns on Marbalarma and Kensington, Venango and Slon, Dramblys and Passyunk. In the rush to be done with the unwanted Fant, these vessels slipped off the grid, ostensibly kept in active service to transport latecomers, which went on for most of a decade. When the planet’s pharmaceutical treasure trove opened, these same ships provided some support for building Barsk’s space elevator and orbiting satellite. But then, under the guise of ‘business as usual,’ various agents of the new forming Caudex purchased every Fant ship and began hiding them throughout the system, powering down all nonessential energies and limiting personnel to the barest of crews. Alliance licensing databases showed all of them as decommissioned, sold to other concerns, or crashed on the surface of one of the moons of Barsk and destroyed.” (pgs. 66-67)

Since the Alliance maintains the pretense of representing all the races of the galaxy, it has to allow a token representative of the Fant. This is Senator Jorl ben Tral, “who can speak with the dead, navigates galactic politics as Barsk’s unwelcome representative, and digs even deeper into the past than ever before to discover new truths of his own.” (blurb) Pizlo, a Fant teenager, seems especially ostracized; he is an albino, considered an abomination by the other Fant who are considered abominations themselves by the rest of the galaxy. But Pizlo’s physical and mental uniqueness makes him able to “hear” voices from the moons of Barsk. He investigates …

The Moons of Barsk (cover by Victo Ngai) would be helped by more background from Barsk, but the reader is quickly swept up by the story. Be aware that there is at least one more novel to come.

– Fred Patten

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Mechanical Animals: Tales at the Crux of Creatures and Tech, Edited by Selena Chambers and Jason Heller – Book Review by Fred Patten

October 25, 2018, 8:00 am
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Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Mechanical Animals: Tales at the Crux of Creatures and Tech, edited by Selena Chambers and Jason Heller.
Erie, CO, Hex Publishers, November 2018, trade paperback, $19.99 (417 pages), Kindle $5.99.

This is not a furry book, but an anthology of 22 stories and articles about mechanical animals, including a cyborg. Most of them are about mindless clockwork robots. There are a few that feature self-aware AIs in the form of animals. These are close enough to furries to warrant Mechanical Animals to be reviewed here.

Mike Libby, in his Introduction, talks about being fascinated by mechanical animals from his childhood. “When I was ten I wanted one of those battery-powered motorized dogs you would see outside Radio Shack, that was leashed to its battery-powered remote control, and after a couple of high-pitched barks, would flip backwards, landing perfectly, ready to repeat his mechanical trick.” (p. 9) Jess Nevins, in his 13-page “Mechanical Animals”, summarizes them in literature from Homer in The Iliad to real examples in history (“The German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Müller von Königsberg, aka Regiomontanus (1436-1476), was reliably reported to have constructed a flying mechanical eagle for the Emperor Maximilian in 1470.” – p. 29), to the present.

“Two Bees Dancing” by Tessa Kum is the first story:

“Focus. This pain is old and familiar. It is not important. Focus on what is important.

‘We aren’t going to hurt you.’

It is on the table before you. Small. Antennae relaxed, wings spread, legs locked and unmoving.

‘We need your help.’ (p. 33)

A nameless government drone pilot on permanent disability is kidnapped and forced to fly a reprogrammed bee for criminal purposes. Instead, the reprogramming puts him into mental contact with the HiveAI and into a whole new world.

“Brass Monkey” by Delia Sherman is set in a clockwork late Victorian London. The characters in Jenny Wren’s Doll and Mechanical Emporium are elderly, crippled Mrs. Wren, the shop assistant Miss Edwige, and Mrs. Wren’s adopted daughter Lizzie. “If Mrs. Wren was the heart of the emporium and Miss Edwige its back and legs, then Lizzie was its inventive mind.” (p. 53). When the emporium becomes especially busy at Christmastime, “The door opened and out came Lizzie in her leather apron, her magnifying spectacles pushed into her cloudy hair, and on her shoulder a small capuchin monkey, such as commonly accompany organ-grinders, wearing a little scarlet vest.” (p. 54). The monkey is Annabella, Lizzie’s clockwork invention, made to help sort out the beads and ribbons and coins of the business day. When Annabella proves skilled enough to tell real coins from counterfeits, the three women set out to find the counterfeiter – but it’s Annabella who solves the case.

“The Rebel” by Maurice Broaddus and Sarah Hans takes place in modern America. “Garrika Sharp hunched over a tray of gears, scrounging through pieces like a scattered metal jigsaw puzzle.” (p. 74)

“Her critics dismissed her first forays as steampunk taxidermy. All about recycling and repurposing, she once sourced roadkill for skeletons, combining preserved remains with machinery. Like stuffed pets with bionic parts. Her favorite from back then was a squirrel whose spine had been replaced by a series of gears and winches so that it looked like its vertebrae had unzipped. Its head dangled at an odd angle from a broken neck. Her mother, fearing her a necromancer, waited until Garrika was at one of her treatments, gathered the mechanized corpses, and threw the desecrations away.” (p. 76)

Garrika’s friend Phonse is a street artist whose taggings include rune magic. His magic and the weed she smokes bring her constructs – Eagle, Elephant, Rabbit, Lion, Unicorn, Giraffe, and more – to life.

“Exhibitionist” by Lauren Beukes, a story about an art gallery featuring a meat art exhibit, is the first story that’s not furry at all. It’s good; it’s just not furry.

The protagonist in “Stray Frog” by Jesse Bullington is Schiller, a truant officer of the future. He’s also the villain, a doped-up sadist who uses his pipa to over-narcotize (to death?) the prep-schoolers that he thinks may be playing hooky from school. His pipa gun is the mechanical animal here:

“‘There, there,’ Schuller murmured to his pipa, the veiny grip pulsing in his palm as he dipped the fingers of his free hand into its slimy holster, smearing it with hydrating ichor. The weapon croaked its appreciation. He made sure to work the goo into the freshly emptied divots in its back, and applied a far lighter touch to the live pockets that were still bulging with narcotic eggs. His little shootout with these thugs had used up half his ammunition. He’d have to feed it as soon as he got back to his desk to make sure it laid new rounds before their next shift.” (pgs. 113-114)

There is much more detail on just what a pipa is. It’s not intelligent, so this isn’t a furry story, but it is fascinating.

In “The Hard Spot in the Glacier” by An Owomoyela, Ayo is part of a research expedition on Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons. She is looking for Parker, another explorer who may have been injured in a moonquake, when a series of quakes endangers her and her mechanical centipede. She must decide whether to continue the search for Parker, or give him up for lost and return to base. The centipedes are programmed to offer balanced advice, but Ayo thinks that her centipede sounds scared. Is it, or is she reading her own emotions and desires into its speech?

“‘What do I do?’ she muttered, mostly to herself.

She was surprised when the centipede answered.

((I don’t like this. I think we should go home.))

Irrationally – because she’d had the same thought, after all – Ayo felt a surge of anger. She was out here, and she wasn’t complaining. What right did this idiot piece of equipment have?

But it wasn’t programmed to complain. It was programmed to make a threat assessment and deliver it in an emotionally-relatable way.” (pgs. 127-128)

“Every Single Wonderful Detail” by Stephen Graham Jones begins: “Because he knew he wasn’t going to be there for her teenage years, Grace’s dad built a German Shepherd to be there in his stead.” Grace’s dad, dying of cancer, builds the best German Shepherd he could to guard Grace. But sometimes a teen girl doesn’t want a big dog who can be counted upon to get between her and the boys who ask her out; who is more efficient at that than any live dog.

“The Nightingale” by Hans Christian Andersen is the first classic reprint, from 1843. The Emperor of China is delighted by the singing of the dowdy nightingale until a clever inventor makes a clockwork bird that can sing just as prettily and is made of gold and jewels besides. But the clockwork bird breaks down, which the real nightingale doesn’t. This is the first story in which the mechanical animal is clearly inferior to the natural animal. Also, the real nightingale converses with the Emperor, making this an undeniably furry story.

It’s unclear whether “Le Cygne Baiseur” by Molly Tanzer is an Adult erotic story or a horror story. Emily is the moderator of a museum film program on “Erotic Parodies” showing a seldom-seen Le Cygne Baiseur, based on the legend of Leda and the Swan. In it, “Mr. Hubert, the celebrated toymaker”, makes a mechanical swan that ravishes a maiden. The museum also has on display the prop model of the mechanical swan with an erect human phallus that was used in the old film. At night when everyone is gone, the mechanical swan comes to life and ravishes Emily. Or is it Zeus inhabiting the mechanical swan?

“Among the Water Buffaloes, a Tiger’s Steps” by Aliette de Bodard is set in the far future, when:

“After the sun goes down, the girls huddle together in the remnants of a house by the sea – every screen, every scrap of metal since long scavenged to keep their own bodies going – and tell each other stories. Of animals, and plants, and of the world before and after the Catastrophe. Thuy is outrageously good at this. Her sight allows her to read the other girls’ microscopic cues from heartbeat to temperature of skin, and adapt her tales of spirits and ghosts for maximum effects. Ngoc He stutters, barely hiding the tremors in her hands – nerve-wires that broke down and that she hasn’t yet scavenged replacements for – but she has the largest range of tales of any of them. Ai Hong speaks almost absent-mindedly, playing with those few crab-bots that aren’t frightened by so much light and noise – they skitter away when she puts down her hand, and draw back again when she frowns in thought, trying to recall a particular plot point.” (p. 190)

The story follows Kim Trang, a repair construct (or the distant descendant of a repair construct), as she brings a “tiger” into their midst; the girl Mei who may destroy them all. The mechanical animals are the girls themselves, who have raided this post-Catastrophe society for metal parts and electronics to keep themselves alive. I consider the story less interesting than its background.

“The Twin Dragons of Sentimentality and Didacticism” by Nick Mamatas has a colorful view of the near future:

“Things had changed. First had come mechanimals: robotic elephants, and safaris that allowed tourists to hunt them down and keep them wound via the gigantic if purely decorative keys on their backs. As the animals died off, they were replaced, but not in the order in which the ecosystem was collapsing. The big ones were rolled out first, like cars used to be. Tigers and orangutans and wildebeests and great golden bears, those last beloved of Silicon Valley. Every seven-year-old scion of a techie family rode one to school. The bulletproof golden bears could eat rampage shooters, it was believed, though this feature was never widely tested in the field.

Only later came microdrones in the shape of perfect dragonflies and hummingbirds, then deer ticks. […]” (pgs. 214-215) Sorry, but this goes on and on and on. It’s a really stunning description of how society is changed, but it’s not at all furry.

“The Artist of the Beautiful” by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1844) is the next reprint. Peter Hovenden, a retired master watchmaker, becomes jealous about the secret project that his young successor and former apprentice Owen Warland is working on. Warland, “the Artist of the Beautiful”, becomes despondent that he will never make anything more delicate and intricate than Hovenden has. Warland gets the idea of trying to infuse a spirit into machinery. This story being in Mechanical Animals, you can guess that he succeeds. What happens then?

There are eight more stories. Two are excerpts from 19th-century novels; Electric Bob’s Big Black Ostrich: or, Lost on the Desert by Robert T. Toombs (1893), and The Steam House; Chapter V: The Iron Giant by Jules Verne (1880). Both feature huge clockwork marvels, the Ostrich and an Elephant. “The Clockwork Penguin Dreamed of Stars” by Caroline Yoachim is definitely furry; its main character is Gwin, one of the penguins abandoned on Earth when mankind emigrated to the stars:

“It was one of those rare nights when the smog thinned out enough for stars to be visible in the sky above the penguin enclosure. Gwin adjusted her synthetic feathers with her beak, arranging them neatly and plucking out any that were broken or bent. She didn’t want to groom, but her programming said it was preening time, so she had no choice.

[…]

Gwin was a dreamer. The other animals judged this to be a flaw, but she saw nothing wrong with snapping at fish that were beyond the reach of her beak. She was tired of being confined, tired of the constant noise of the automated educational recordings, tired of acting out the same routines day in and day out.” (pgs. 361-362)

“Closer to the Sky” by Carrie Vaughn is a traditional Western, except that Copper, one of the horses, is a cyborg:

“Now, instead of flesh and blood for legs this singular cowpony had steel and pistons, rubber tendons, and brass flywheels, slicked with oil and faster than bees’ wings. He had interchangeable shoes: broad plates for sand, spikes for ice, rubberized points like a billy goat’s hooves, and regular polished-for-parades horse’s feet. Mostly, though, this cowpony could now run fast. And he still loved his girl. (You can tell a horse loves his girl by the way he rests his nose on her shoulder, whuffing softly, like he has come home. You can tell a girl loves her pony by the way her arms exactly fit around his head when he lowers it to greet her.” (pgs. 380-381)

Mechanical Animals (cover by Aaron Lovett) isn’t a furry anthology, but it doesn’t pretend to be. These are stories of automata built to exhibit biomimicry. It’s close enough to furry fiction that you should enjoy it.

– Fred Patten

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A financial fuss about FurFlight – can it fend off a fandom fiasco?

October 26, 2018, 7:15 am
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Distressing news has come out about a furry-organized travel service, which appears to be in trouble with some big financial obligations at the moment. The fur is flying, and not in a good way.

FurFlight bundles furries together for group air travel from highly-active fandom regions to highly-attended conventions, most notably from Seattle and San Francisco to Midwest FurFest. The idea is to improve the boring parts and the endpoint arrangements. It happened successfully in 2017. (As far as I know, no fellow travelers complained about fur allergy flareups or the plane smelling like a zoo – score for fandom image!)

FurFlight isn’t affiliated with Midwest FurFest. One of the con staffers told me about previously advising people not to buy in because of no accountability for an independent operation. Trusting other fans comes with risks known to anyone who’s been burned by bad art commissions.

Mike Folf is the organizer and principal of Canis Vulpes LLC, FurFlight’s corporation registered in 2018.  Nobody else appears on the paperwork (although I’ve seen references to unnamed other team members or execs.) Mike goes to my local events and I’ve liked knowing him as a friendly furry guy. (I have no business relationship with the service). I’ve also seen many good recommendations and social media posts about the trips. So I was happy to host Mike on the site as “community access” so he could promote it:

Now that a problem has reared its fluffy head, I’m guessing that the September timing may have involved pressure to increase signups and income. That unfortunately synchs with a LiveJournal post by Aloha Wolf made on October 24.

Aloha Wolf reports that shortly after the Dogpatch article went out, Mike told him there was an imminent travel booking deadline with Alaska Air, and difficulty with the bank limiting a payment over $10,000.  On October 9, Aloha Wolf was convinced to advance a credit card payment of over $35,000 to cover costs. Making the deadline would keep FurFlight on track to honor obligations to paying users (113 of them).

One can see the pressure that led Aloha Wolf to help in an emergency – and the trap he got into if FurFlight’s finances can’t match promises to repay the credit. On October 20, repayment from Canis Vulpes LLC to Aloha Wolf bounced, leaving him holding a major debt, at least for now.

A trusted tipper and FurFlight user sent me a chat log showing the events. Mike admitted to misleading about repayment ability, so he could secure the $35,000 in credit – which I can’t read as anything but criminal fraud.  The tipper also gave further info about loan requests that supported a desperate lack of funds.

There’s more info about how things went downhill. According to Aloha Wolf, his casual review of records showed insubstantial budget or accounting, and flights were being sold at a loss. He judged the company planning as unsustainable if things can’t turn around. Commenters judged the prices as “too good to be true“.

Where did FurFlight’s income go? According to the chat log, company setup included costs of thousands for Twitter marketing, costs for Mike Folf to visit places being marketed to, and GSuite software. There was merchandise planned to earn funds but production time extended into 2019.

Flights were being sold for 2019 to cover 2018 costs – which social media observers compared to a Ponzi scheme. That synchs with FurFlight’s October appeals for more signups for new service to new conventions:

The more I read, the more it makes me think there was months of time where Mike Folf knew and didn’t address a looming problem before what looks like using false pretenses to buy more time. I wish I’d known this before promoting FurFlight.

There were some people with closer involvement who saw this coming. I don’t know if there’s more to know about why Aloha Wolf was convinced to pay so much, but Asic Fox corroborates being misled to cover $5000 in FurFlight costs. (Most of that debt is paid down, but he claims it was caused by malfeasance.)

Scaleup problems are often a dramatic way that apparently successful ventures derail (remember Fyre Fest, where fraud just got prison time for its organizer?) Luckily, this didn’t hit hundreds of travelers en route, perhaps leaving them high and dry – just two creditors, so far.

It doesn’t help that the personal @MikeFolf Twitter account was just deleted. However, I haven’t directly spoken to Aloha Wolf or Mike Folf about this yet, so this is where things stand. It could be possible for things to turn around – perhaps with additional funding appeals.

Personally, given what I saw Mike Folf admit in the chat log, I can’t see this happening without his position of responsibility going to someone else. He would be very lucky if it ends there. It would be nice to see a formal statement (I’d be happy to host one.)

Time will tell if repayment is made, obligations are honored, and FurFlight’s public problem is smoothed over. Travelers may or may not get what they expect.

UPDATE: Boozy Badger has his own take with the bluntest headline ever, about state law of licensing for travel service.

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Civilized Beasts Volume III, Editor-in-Chief Laura Govednik, Editor Vincent Corbeau – Book Review by Fred Patten

October 30, 2018, 8:00 am
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Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Civilized Beasts volume III, editor-in-chief Laura Govednik, editor Vincent Corbeau.
Manvil, TX, Weasel Press, September 2018, trade paperback, $8.00 ([vii +] 109 pages).

Here is the third annual volume of animal poetry from Weasel Press. It contains 98 pages of poetry, of mostly one page or less. Several authors have two or more poems. There are far fewer familiar furry fan names this year than there was last year; other than the editors, I recognized only Michael H. Payne. There are five poems by Larry D. Thomas, the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate.

Civilized Beasts is popularly advertised as an anthology of furry poetry, but it is almost all about realistic animals or the wonders of nature. Many authors have written poetic portraits of their own dogs, cats, horses, or goldfish. To be fair, it’s hard to write a work of furry fiction of one page.

There are some rhymes and a lot of blank verse. The cleverest poem graphically is the one chosen to end the volume: “Telltale” by Ruth Sabath Rosenthal. It’s in the shape of a wagging tail.

Civilized Beasts volume III (cover again by Darkomi) is another charity for the Wildlife Conservation Society. “All proceeds from this anthology go towards the Wildlife Conservation Society.”

Full disclosure: I have five poems in this.

– Fred Patten

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A Peculiar School, by J. Schlenker – Book Review by Fred Patten

October 31, 2018, 8:00 am
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Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

A Peculiar School, by J. Schlenker.
Olive Hill. KY, Binka Publishing, September 2018, trade paperback, $11.95 (326 [+ 2] pages). Kindle $4.99.

“Miss Ethel Peacock strutted and proudly displayed her plumage as she paced around the waiting room of Mr. Densworth Lion. She had come unannounced, but she was so excited about the idea she had received in a dream, that she dared not lose any momentum. She could have called ahead, but what if he refused to see her? No, she decided not to risk it.” (p. 3)

This is an animal fantasy, but not a furry one. The peacock plumage is on the male, but hey, this is a fantasy. Besides, Jerri Schlenker knows that.

“‘A peacock? A peacock, you say? What is a peacock doing here?’ Mr. Densworth Lion asked his secretary, in disbelief.

‘Technically, she’s a peahen. Her husband is a peacock. That is, if she has a husband. I don’t think she does as she introduced herself as ‘Miss’. But together: they would be peafowl,’ his secretary [a lioness] corrected.

Mr. Densworth Lion uttered a slight roar of impatience.

‘She’s a teacher at the aviary,’ his secretary added.” (pgs. 3-4)

This is at Cub Academy, run by principal Mr. Densworth Lion, in a nature preserve. The animals are civilized; Mr. Lion wears eyeglasses and sits at a desk with papers and a candy jar upon it.

But not too civilized. Or, not into the 21st century:

“‘What I propose. Mr. Densworth Lion, is that we use your school as a model – a model for a bigger school, a university of sorts, one that houses all animals.’

‘All animals?” he roared. ‘We teach cubs here – lion cubs. Such a proposal is ludicrous.’” (p. 11)

Mr. Lion will not even listen to Miss Peacock’s proposal for a school in which all animals are treated equally. Well, maybe not the animals domesticated by humans, like dogs and cats. They’re different:

“The dog barked for a good solid hour almost every night. What was he trying to say? Since dogs had taken up with humans, their language had become garbled and unrecognizable. It was obvious the humans didn’t understand them either as every night the human came out on the porch and yelled something to the dog in the scrambled tongue of humans.” (p. 13)

The human is a zookeeper, of a zoo at the edge of a forest in which the Cub Academy is located. The next day after her turndown by the lion principal, Miss Peacock – or Ethel, if we may be informal – is visited by her friend, Miss Luce Pigeon. Ethel tells Luce more of her dream of an animal school than she had the chance to tell Mr. Densworth Lion; perhaps luckily, because peacocks come from India, and Ethel’s dream of an animal school was vaguely Hindu led by an enlightened Yuga.

“‘Such a school would certainly be an enlightened thing.’ Ethel sighed. ‘Maybe I’m just a silly old peahen. Me. Densworth Lion said it was not in an animal’s nature to get along, in fact, quite the opposite.’

‘He’s wrong there.’ Luce said, reaching for another macaroon.

‘I would truly like to believe that is so. Do you really think so, Luce?’

‘I don’t think so, I know so,’ Luce said with a satisfied smirk.

[…]

‘I don’t understand. What do you mean? How do you know so?’ Ethel asked with a puzzled look on her face.

‘There is a whole group of animals, different ones, living and working together where I live in the city – some old, some young – a badger, a tiger, a hyena, and an orangutan.’

Ethel sat motionless for a full moment, not believing her own ears. These were the animals she saw staring down at her from the moon. Truly this was a sign, but erring on the side of caution, she asked, ‘Is this gossip, hearsay, some wild fantasy, something perhaps made up during a drunken spree with the bongo player?’” (p. 31)

Luce explains that the animals (also a polar bear) are escapees from the city’s zoo who are hiding out together in the tunnels under the city. They have been forced to cooperate to survive, but are miserable. Ethel is sure that this group is meant to become the nucleus of her dream school – if she can get the flighty Luce to introduce her to the filthy, sullen animals, if she can clean them enough and encourage them into enthusiasm for her school, if she can present them to Mr. Densworth Lion as a symbol of success, if, if, if…

I’m unsure if A Peculiar School is supposed to be a comedy or an exercise in frustration. Or both. Everything that can go wrong does, but Ethel perseveres. There are also Unexpected Surprises.

The reader has to ignore how much the animals are not living close to nature, and how blind the humans are to not be aware of them. Here Ethel decides to bring a present to the hiding animals (she comes from a Hindi culture where you always bring a small present when you go visiting):

“‘I don’t know what I have they would like. We will have to make a stop. We will take a little side trip to Squirrelly Emporium. It’s on the way. Well, nearly on the way.’

‘The squirrels have an emporium?’ her friend asked.

‘That’s what they call it. It’s not as big as the shops in the city, but it winds in so many different directions. They have been squirreling away various trinkets for years. They have a rather large inventory.’

‘An inventory of what?’ Luce asked.

‘Oh, of this and that. Mostly that. Things discarded by humans, a lot of arts and crafts, a lot of things made from nut shells. Believe me, you can find about anything there. Things you would never expect to find.’” (p. 40)

In the emporium, they hear of an owl that is trying to translate Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone from English into Animal, but is stymied by “Some new language he is not used to humans using.” (p. 45) Comedy plus frustration.

The cover of A Peculiar School is by the author; an exercise in Photoshop of animal photographs, two taken by Chris Schenkler, the author’s husband, at the Cincinnati Zoo. The book has the air of a family project. Sometimes it seems overly cute; Schenkler has a fondness for alliterative names for her minor characters: Mr. Sebastian Squirrel, Mr. Oliver Owl, Mr. Filbert Fox, Ms. Rhonda Rabbit, Mr. Ronald Raccoon, Mrs. Betsy Bear. On the whole, though, it is an enjoyable read; good for all ages. Recommended.

– Fred Patten

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

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Panique au Zoo; Une Enquête de Poulpe et Castor Burma, by Frédéric Bagères (story), Marie Voyelle (art), Jerôme Alvarez (colors) – Book Review by Fred Patten

November 1, 2018, 8:00 am
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Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Panique au Zoo; Une Enquête de Poulpe et Castor Burma, by Frédéric Bagères (story), Marie Voyelle (art), Jerôme Alvarez (colors).
Paris, Éditions Delcourt, June 2018, trade paperback, €23,95 (187 [+ 5] pages), Kindle €16,99.

Fred Patten and Lex Nakashima strike again!

“Built in 1740, at the far northern end of the isle, the Canon Zoo is the oldest and greatest zoo in the world. Founded in the XVI century by the monk Sylvestre Marie, it is today managed exclusively by its occupants.

“Aimed at an instructive goal, it offers its visitors, through its presentation of natural habitats, the chance to see how they have lived, over the centuries to the present, “animals in a state of nature”.” The sign is defaced with a graffiti-scrawl saying, “Obey!”

The first pages, a general meeting in the director’s office (a tapir), establish that things are different today. (Also that the dialogue is full of French puns and double-entendres.) Something is causing some of the animals to mutate into forms that are embarrassing at best, potentially fatal at worst. The director has hired two private detectives, Octopus and Beaver Burma, to find the reason and stop it.

“Eight months ago, some employees began showing the first symptoms. I think the otters were the first.”

“What do you mean?”

“They became covered with spines.”

“Like porcupines?”

“Exactly.”

“Like ‘otter-pines?’”

“If you like. They’re incapable today of running their stand in the zoo.”

“What are they selling?”

“Balloons.”

[…]

“Next it was the turn of those that your colleague would call the ‘polar urchins’, who are living today in the canteen’s freezer.”

“Then the ‘cat-pony’ that we put into the Asian animal enclosure.”

“And the ‘oyster-constrictor’ who spends his days trying to swallow the ‘rat-engale’ trying to find its voice.”

“The affair took a nasty turn when we found the “serpent-pie-thon’ dead, of self-asphyxiation. The animals began to get scared.”

Octopus and Beaver Burma start questioning the animals in the zoo. Did the otter-pines notice anything different at the time they began growing needles? Yeah, it was right when Maurice, the oldest animal in the zoo – a dodo – retired.

Do you have any idea what’s caused these changes?

Pollution! Nuclear radiation! Allergies! Satellites! Picon beer? [a popular French beer] The ozone layer? Egyptian water! [one of the ten Biblical Egyptian plagues] Progress! Wi-Fi! Extraterrestrials! Graffitti? Black magic? The OGM? [Genetically Modified food] My Aunt Hortense! God?

“What’s next on the list?”

“Two species quarantined because their metamorphoses has ostracized them. They’re in the vivariums: the anacondoctopus and the pengoctopus.”

“Will you stop with the stupid species names?”

“I make no promises.”

The pengoctopus guesses that the zoo is built over a haunted bison grave, while the anacondoctopus is sure it’s a plot of the veterinarians, one of whom (“A charming man.”) is named Doctor Moreau.

Well, this is only up to page 25. Have a good time in the remaining 162 pages seeing all the animal combinations, figuring out who the villain is, and the motivation for the plot. I’m not a fan of Voyelle’s artwork, but Bagères’s story is very funny.

– Fred Patten

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

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Jello Biafra’s Incredibly Strange Interview and dance party with furries: San Francisco, 12/1/18

November 12, 2018, 8:00 am
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Info: Frolicparty.com or Facebook – Frolic with Jello Biafra

Are you a man or are you a mouse?
If you love your fun, die for it!
– The Power of Lard by Lard

Man or mouse: why pick just one? Furries can have their cake and eat it too. (It’s cheese cake, of course!)

That line jumped out of my car music on a drive to San Jose’s PAWcon, on the day after Halloween. Besides rocking my giant ears, I was geeking out about just doing a 45 minute phone call with Jello Biafra.

Jello is a punk legend, the singer for Lard and the Dead Kennedys, the founder of Alternative Tentacles (one of the longest running indie record labels)… and he’s friendly to this fluffy fandom. Is that punk? Well, will it annoy purists and/or make you laugh? Then it just might be. And will the average furry care? I’d say it’s cooler than the times when furries infested the White House and assimilated Insane Clown Posse. If you could put all those things together, and let the mayhem commence with cute animals and crazy clowns doing a coup on the Capitol lawn, it would only be half as outrageous as this amazing event.

Speaking of Halloween, that wasn’t just a date on the calendar. Halloween is a classic Dead Kennedys song, and Jello referenced it when I asked for his thoughts on furries. The song rages against social regulations and asks why people don’t express themselves like that day, every day? So, furries, you got compared to a classic punk rager by the legend who wrote it. (He also wrote Nazi Punks Fuck Off. By the way, Nazi Furs Fuck Off!)

See why I was so stoked? Getting in that spirit also reminds me of Ministry’s Every Day is Halloween; Jello’s band Lard is a metal/industrial collab with the guys from Ministry. And when I asked what his fursona could be, he gave the punkest answer:

(Of course it wouldn’t be some cuddly thing, even though there’s the Lard song about “I wanna be a drug-sniffing dog”)…

Those are some highlights of the interview, but don’t just read it.  Come to San Francisco and experience this weird mix of Jello and fur at his Incredibly Strange Dance Party.  It’s joining forces with Frolic, the original furry dance party. This maniacal mingle was arranged by Frolic founder DJ Neonbunny, and it definitely won’t suck, even if it has lampreys!

There’s lots of love here. I asked for fan art, and got talent to feature from ex-San Francisco punk furry artist, librarian, and sweetheart/bad ass Boiler Roo.

For the talk, I tried to find out: What does Jello expect from us? How do fun and humor fit with politics? And what are good ways to tell nazis to fuck off?

Boiler Roo says: ‘Jello Biafra changed my life as a kid and continues to inspire always.’

Patch: Hi, is this Jello? Can you hear me okay?

Jello: Yeah, I’m fine. And suddenly you started getting garbled, so be very careful of where you place your orifice. And you know which orifice I’m talking about.

I’ve got many, but I think this is the right one.

Right? Considering this is at The Eagle, we’ve got to make all these things clear.

Have you been to the Eagle many times?

Many times. They treat you like family there, really good people. I’ve done the Incredibly Strange Dance Party there before, but never at a furry event. This is both an honor and an exciting new adventure.

I’m curious to see what happens you meet the furries! And you know it’s mutual, you’re probably the most amazing person who’s ever done a party with us.

I think you’re giving me way too much credit there. I have to live with me on a daily basis and I’m not always terribly amazing. Then again, not everybody gets asked to DJ at the Eagle when people have a bunch of animal costumes on. I can hardly wait.

Well, we’ve got people flying in for this.

You’re kidding. Wow.

At least a few.

Are they going to be in costume on the plane?

That’s actually happened. There was a service called FurFlight that would fill most of a plane with them.

Oh Wow. Ironically you’re interviewing me the day after I performed that old dead Kennedys song Halloween at the Damned show. Sitting in with The Darts. I don’t know how familiar you are with the lyrics to that song, but I was shocked when I came out here, how seriously people took Halloween and everything when it was supposed to be unserious. Months in advance, it was “what are you going to be for Halloween, what are you going to be?” And this was even when I was still in my one quarter of college education at UC Santa Cruz. So finally I got so disgusted with it all. I went to the Halloween party dressed as Hitler.

Oh man. You gotta be careful about that these days. But that’s a lot of effort. [I wish I told Jello I used to date the UCSC Banana Slug, no kidding…]

Of course. You know, I did it for anti social shock value and considering it was UC Santa Cruz, it really accomplished that.

I can imagine, back in the day you had Siouxsie Sioux and Sid Vicious doing that kind of stuff.

That was a whole different motif that I’m not entirely down with. Siouxsie had been rumored to have some pretty right wing views for real, but hopefully not. I don’t know. But the second part of the song is, why not every day have Halloween, wouldn’t it be great to go into a bank and find a teller dressed as a Moose or something like that? It should be Halloween all year round, which is what makes the furries so much fun. There’s an old photo in one of the Re/Search Pranks book of cops arresting an Earth First protestor. And the Earth First person is in a full bear costume. Not like a taxidermied bear, but closer to Yogi Bear, which makes it even better.

I’ve been told that Wavy Gravy used to dress up as the Easter Bunny because it looked bad having cops arrest the bunny, and they just didn’t want to do it.

Yeah. One of my many unusual friends in high school showed up with two foot rabbit ears on his head one day, to show he was an individualist. I’m not sure that lasted until the afternoon. But then another time, my girlfriend was on an airplane, and there was one of those guys who dresses like they came out of a GWAR show or something to go to an Oakland Raiders game. You know those people, right?

Oh yeah, they’re all painted.

The guy was in full Neo-GWAR regalia sitting like that in his seat on the plane! Because the raiders were playing the game out of town, he was flying to the game in costume. And she asked him like “what are you doing?” – “I’m the Violator, man”. And you know, that was his name. He had to be “The Violator”.

That’s a lot of effort there.

If that’s what somebody has to do, to reclaim some of their dignity after getting all the beatdowns of the workaday world we’re in now, then okay. But if you’re going to go fly out of town as The Violator to games, some of us have the right to laugh.

I hope he took it in good humor too.

I have no idea. I’m not sure you could tell whether he was smiling or not. I don’t know if it was a mask or just makeup.

Can you tell me about the Incredibly Strange Dance Party and your music collection? What kind of surprises are we in for?

I hadn’t DJ’ed in years until Jonathan Toubin, the New York Night Train guy who has this event called Soul Clap, and you forget the kind of music that gets played, high energy vintage, 60s, 70s soul – and first he brought me in to judge a dance contest so I could put my name on the ads. I was at the Elbo Room, and Jonathan and I really hit it off with talking about records and music. We both knew Billy and Miriam from the Norton label in New York, one of the great reissue and archival labels in the world. Then the next time he came through was a big old 2 room thing at 111 Minna. He said “why don’t you just do a set?” and oh, okay, soul isn’t my main area. I just started liking it after all these years. I’ll just bring some stuff I like that’s kind of obscure, and a few other things I think I can get away with squirting in. And it all worked really well, to the point that some of the other DJs like Jonathan and DJ Primo, a really, really good oldies DJ from the bay area, they were looking at my records. “What’s this?” So then I knew I was in.

Then when I could do my own events, I decided to go all over the map, mixing soul, 60’s garage, instrumental, trash, dementia, punk here and there, post punk, maybe some metal, although it’s usually some Ministry or Lard if I do any of that. I just kinda mix and match. Neonbunny told me he mainly plays house music, so this is going to be a huge contrast.

Yeah, big change of pace.

Hopefully people find value in it, and I guess I have to measure it by the heads bobbing and the tails swirling.

Nobody parties like furries. They’re going to be jumping up and down and you’ll see kangaroos hitting the ceiling.

It’s such an open slate with me because I know so little about this scene. I can’t really give you many impressions because I just don’t know. I’m gonna find out. One thing I can guarantee though, sorry folks, I can’t do this gig with a big old fox head on me because then I can’t put the headphones on or see what I’m doing.

And the incredibly strange part of the name come from those two books Re/Search put out, Incredibly Strange Music Volume One and Two.

I’m familiar, I met Vale [the publisher in San Francisco.]

I’m known for being the first 56 pages in Volume Two, and a collector of the wild and weird and cool, you know, I wanted that. I wanted the flow of people in Two. Although Jon Ginoli of Pansy Division told me that he was disappointed that my set wasn’t completely strange. But you know, I like the dance part. It’s nice when people get wild, and I’ll kind of follow the groove and see what’s floating people’s boat.

There’s a dance floor as well as what’s strange and fun and crazy. I trust that you’re going to do an awesome job.

Because it’s not like I have to look at all my old Eagle playlists and try to figure out what people haven’t already heard or liked or didn’t like. It’s kind of a blank slate with people used to hearing house music. While I’m sure a lot of them know other things too, hopefully lots of fun will be had.

You’re going to get a young crowd too. That’s what the furry fans tend to be. It’s a lot of college age people. There’s a very wide spread, of course, I was born around when your first album came out, but I’m a fan.

Damn and you’re already 40, it reminds me of how fucking old I actually am.

You’re only as old as you feel. And as old as you want to play. Which brings me to what animal would you be, if you could choose? What would your fursona be?

Shit man, I was afraid I was going to be asked that. I put no thought into it whatsoever… (pause)… How about that lamprey on the cover of the Power of Lard EP?

Jello Photo: Elizabeth Sloan

That’s a great choice. (Laughs) I don’t know a lot of parasite animal furries, but there’s always oddball choices. Like my friend Jaden wants to be a Turducken.

I don’t even know what that is.

It’s a duck inside a chicken inside a turkey. [His name is “Stovetop” – he’s a dom and a top.]

Do you think there will be any Hawkwind fans there?

I don’t know. I mean I’d get down to that.

In their heyday, around the time that amazing all-time one of the most important albums of my life, their Space Ritual album came out, the live album. Lemmy was still in the band. Nick Turner, their Sax Player, wore a full lizard suit on stage.

That’s so great.

He was a little man with a big old head with a place for him to put the reed for a sax in his mouth, big tail and everything.

You’re going to see some of those out at the party.

Any dinosaurs?

There are dinosaurs, but it’s funny. They tend to be sort of soft and cuddly ones. They’re not going to rip your head off or eat you. Unless you ask them nicely. And there are people into that.

Well, I’d rather have those kind of dinosaurs than Trump and Pence.

That makes me really curious. You have a lot of experience battling these assholes. How do the politics of right now compare to the Reagan days?

I hate to say it folks, but we are being subjected to a slow but sure, full on corporate coup. That started with Reagan and maybe even with Carter. And you think of a coup as a slow, very slow moving tank. Every once in a while when they think they can get away with it, they really step on the fucking gas. With 9/11, they stepped on the gas, rammed the Patriot Act through, and things like that. Now they’re really going crazy, even scamming a completely unqualified ideological thug like Brett Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court. The cement is now beginning to dry.

I don’t think it’s going to get as horrible as what’s happening in the Philippines and is about to happen in Brazil. But you know, in spite of all the gentrification and all the nasty spite of the tech boom in this town. One of the reasons I’m still here is that I noticed, Trump only got 20 or 24 percent of the vote in San Francisco. Maybe I should stick around here after all.

Or run for mayor again?

Then I’d have to give up all these other things, including DJing furry parties. I’d have to really do it right, from door to door and everything else. I’ve toyed with the idea of running against Pelosi, but I also realized that would mean giving up music, and doing a lot of other things I’m not sure I really want to do.

If I were to run for anything again, it couldn’t just be a wild outsider prank campaign. What the alternative is, people would expect a lot more out of me.

Once you do a prank once, you don’t want to stay stuck in a rut. The amazing thing about your career is how you keep going and do what you want.

Thank you. I knew that when the Dead Kennedys split that I needed to spread my wings, try other things so I didn’t wind up singing Holiday in Cambodia in titty bars in Modesto to pay for my meals and stuff. I didn’t want to wind up like the other three have, let’s put it that way. Then spoken word took off way beyond what I ever thought it would, and I put a lot of time into that. But I also know that a lot of my songs don’t sound like anybody else’s. It’s just what comes out of me, so if I don’t do them who will? The last thing I want to do… I’m actually kind of offended that a lot of elements in the punk scene have become so retro and nostalgia oriented, and therefore conservative. At least culturally conservative. No, even in the 90’s they were so, “Things should sound like they did in the eighties,” and everybody who was really good that inspired us should just freeze in 1977, or 1982, or whatever. Either play those songs and nothing new, or play nothing but songs that sound like increasingly pale imitations of that. I didn’t want to do that, I’m not a retro guy. I’m a now guy. I think, being involved in Alternative Tentacles as long as I have has been a big help here. Because I’m always trying to dial in on newer stuff.

I like the expansive definition because that encourages me to kind of fit the furries under that. They’re very DIY and grassroots in how they organize. It’s all cottage industry and there’s no corporations running what they do.

Not yet anyway. Look at how commercial and cuddly and smiley faced the whole zombies thing has become.

They can turn it into a soap opera that keeps going and going.

Now there’s zombies here, zombies there, and I think part of it, it’s because they’re trying to find that evil Other to get people to relate to that kind of good and evil battle. You can’t do it with cowboy shows where the bad people are the indigenous native Americans any more. Unless you’re as evil as the Trumpkins, you can’t do it with brown-skinned terrorists, you’ve got to find something else where there’s not going to be any zombies crying bigotry and foul against you. They have to have a fictional Other.

There’s not going to be any Zombie identity movement or anything like that.

Remember that band Servotron? It was an offshoot of Man or Astroman. Another one of these great concept bands. They were a robot supremacist band. No end of bigoted remarks towards humans in between the songs.

That’s just great humor. Now, one of the perplexing things that kind of brings us together in a weird way is, the furries, these nerds, these people who love cuddly cartoon animals, we’ve got this Nazi invasion element and it’s really screwed up.

What causes you to label them full blown nazis?

Well, it’s part of Internet culture. It’s complicated but it ties into places where they come to radicalize youth culture, like they tried with punk way back. It crosses over with furries in a weird way. They’re very small but it’s a real crossover. We had this guy who was admin of the Richard Spencer alt-right chat and he was a furry at the same time, and they were trying to recruit kids here.

Let me guess, he was a wolf, right.

Some of them favor those generic canine type, but it’s hard to say. Honestly they’re not really very furry. They’re just kind of using it as a cover. It’s like another form of Klan hood. They’re not really devoted to characters.

Whoah. That’s disturbing. You can go under cover, just like undercover cops who go to peaceful protests and start violence, with black balaclavas on, calling themselves black bloc when not all of them are. You know, black bloc or Antifa. It’s so much easier to disguise an undercover cop with people showing up wearing stuff like that.

Do you have any opinion in general about the Antifa, are they over the top?

Speaking as somebody who’s been in a lot of protests, some of which got to be wild, I’m not in favor of starting shit. Self defense I get, but often it’s stooping to those people’s level. Not only are the undercover cops going to be mixed in on their side. But we have some of them wearing disguises as Antifa to try to turn peaceful protest violent. We also have to remember that no matter how good you think you are at fighting people, one on one, the people in the so-called alt-right, who used to be known as neo-nazis, before the corporate media cooperated with them to change the term – they’re probably going to be able to out fight you, and they may be armed. Don’t go there.

Number two, I remember in the Seattle protest, it was one big one, it wouldn’t even move there were so many people protesting the WTO, which ultimately helped bring a lot of that down of what they wanted to do… But then, somebody threw a news machine through the window of a Starbucks. And yeah, cool. I love the sound of breaking glass. This is awesome. But I knew full well what would happen afterwards. Sure enough it did. Corporate McNews TV people, from that point onwards, covered Seattle as a violent riot. It wasn’t a peaceful protest, it was a riot. Never mind that even the airline pilots union, the nurses union, the Teamsters, were all joining together on this peaceful protest. They labeled it a riot! They tried to make it as being not just the protest, but also what the protesters views and demands were, all bad. It also showed the cops an excuse to then launch a police riot. Which the Seattle police did. You don’t want to give the cops and the corporate media an excuse to dismiss you as rioters, period.

That’s such a loaded word, to riot. If you have a badge on they don’t use the same word. [Or there’s a double standard for violence at a game with The Violator.]

Yeah.

I labeled these guys full blown Nazis, the furry ones that I told you about. Some of them were at the Charlottesville nazi march. But you know, one of the best things about the furries is as contentious and dramatic as they can get sometimes with arguments, there’s never a fight. They never have fights. You can go to a party that’s full of hundreds of them and they’re wild and bouncing up and down and they never have any fights.

Because it’s so recent, as culture, it’s kind of a wacky alternative wild west. It’s what you decide to do with it too.

It has been around since the early eighties, but it’s only in probably the past 10 years when it’s really taken off to where you can get almost 10,000 of them in one place, like in Chicago at the biggest convention.

That’s a lot. Wow. Speaking of zombies, hopefully it doesn’t turn into what a lot of raves did in the end. Doing bad drugs, listening to really bad disco music and wandering around and staring at people!

Honestly, there’s quite a crossover with rave culture and there’s some problems with partying too much. You’ll have ambulances showing up at the hotels.

You’re always going to have that. The bigger the event, the more it’s upon the person running the event to be properly prepared.

That’s part of this Nazi problem, is they’re taking advantage of how grassroots this stuff is and how shoestring it is. It’s a bunch of fans who started throwing their own parties, no corporations, big money or investment. So the security is kind of self provided and they don’t have a lot of money to hire. These Nazis, they’ll do stuff like call the hotels and threaten the hotels, and force the hotels to demand formal security, which adds $25,000 on the cost of a convention and it kind of kills them. That’s one of their tactics. It almost compares to swatting if you know what swatting is.

Remind me. Oh, calling a SWAT team via the internet on somebody who may be clear across the country. Yeah. Some innocent person got killed that way.

That’s the extreme of it. But the lesser extreme is where they just sort of threaten hotels and make them raise the costs. That’s pretty much the weapon these cowards prefer.

It’s also what’s driven concert tickets through the ceiling. It’s the insurance cost. Like you’re paying these huge ticket prices to see the insurance officials and the security people. Nobody’s really going to that show to see the cops. But that’s kind of what it is.

That makes me want to ask you more about the business of music. Going from a rock and roll tour to doing spoken word, that’s quite a difference in cost I imagine, you don’t have to hire a bus?

Ha! I don’t hire buses in this country anyways. I haven’t gotten that far up the evolutionary scale. Very few bands I know well have.

It seems like you’ve had amazing longevity with running Alternative Tentacles, and I wanted to ask, how do you see music changing with online delivery?

I’m not sure I have a total up to date answer to that. Dominic Davi, who’s now the general manager of Alternative Tentacles, is much more tech and online savvy and is changing all kinds of things around to get us to more people who are used to being served that way. I’m kind of giving him free rein. But I can’t deny that there’s been a huge problem with file sharing and that has blown huge holes in all kinds of labels, some bands have broken up. A lot of retail mom and pop vinyl stores went belly up in the past few years. Now there’s newer ones starting up because there’s a little bit of a vinyl boomlet again, but it doesn’t really make up for everything lost by any stretch of the imagination, or even streaming where, if you’re Lady Gaga, you’ll be getting some money from that. But if you’re me, you ain’t gonna get shit.

I just hope people who still do the file sharing scene would at least pick and choose what to share versus what to buy, because you know, artists who don’t get supported at all will break up their bands. They gotta go find a job to pay the students loans and fucking rent, not just in this town, the cost of living is nuts now for stuff like that. Major labels go so far out their way to rip off their artists anyways that I have no problem with people file sharing off the big boys. They don’t treat their artists fairly anyways. But if somebody grassroots, you know an artist run label or close to it, or Alternative Tentacles, people should think twice before going “Oh yeah. I really like this band you put out, I just shared it with 50 friends, the whole album”… hey wait a minute! It gets tough, it’s not as though I’m rolling in money from all this, it’s the opposite. The whole digital revolution in some ways can do a lot more good than harm. But I wish people would be smarter and grow sharper bullshit detectors, and apply the same cynicism they have towards Fox News or CNN to every last other thing somebody posts on the net somewhere.

You know, I haven’t died in a while. My death hasn’t gone viral in a few years now, but every once in a while that used to happen because nobody stopped and asked, hey, wait a minute, is this even true?

I guess that’s a sign of success when people start spreading rumors about you so badly.

Not just rumors about me, that’s chicken feed compared to what they say about immigrant invasions, or Hillary having a child porn ring in the basement of a pizza place that doesn’t even have a basement in Washington D.C. A guy who believed it walked down there with an automatic rifle. Luckily nobody was killed. This stuff, the fake news and the rumor mongering, it’s really fucking dangerous now. It’s not just Putin’s bots that are doing it, they’re coming from all kinds of places, including people talking shit about somebody else. And then somebody else automatically believing it, adding a little bit to it, and the snowball happens from there.

It’s interesting when there’s a tug of war over the truth, how much power satire and humor has to cut through some of that. I guess that was part of your trial against the Moral Majority types?

It wasn’t against them, it was against the LAPD and the city attorney’s office. I was criminally charged in that case involving Dead Kennedys Frankenchrist album. It was the test case to appeal to the anti music hate movement spearheaded by Al Gore’s wife, Tipper Gore.

That was so nasty and she was so dishonest and barely disguising that she was acting as a Trojan horse for Focus on the Family and the Moral Majority and whatnot. You know, she claimed she was a Liberal Democrat, a feminist, and this that and the other. But the PMRC and that anti music hate campaign had a lot more to do with costing Al Gore the 2000 election than Ralph Nader could have ever hoped to if he wanted to. There was not a lot of youth support for Al Gore. Three guesses as to why.

Not fighting the vote fraud and the rigging in Florida was a bigger one, but that played a major role. And you realize that George W. Bush stole two elections, and the wimpy little corporate Democrats barely did anything to stop that. So the vote fraud, that kind of vote fraud, the real vote fraud, continued. Trump steals 2016 through the interstate crosscheck program, disclosed by Greg Palast. What this means is, Kavanaugh isn’t the only stolen seat on the Supreme Court. There’s not one, you count Gorsuch, there’s not two. There’s four. Roberts and Alito don’t belong there either, they stole those seats because they stole the election.

It tells me something about the power of these sort of culture wars and entertainment to mobilize people. That’s something that I try to get across with my news site. It’s about furries and cartoon animals and all that, but there’s important reasons to have fun and love what you do and be sincere no matter what’s being sold to you. Especially if bullshit comes from inside the house.

That’s why the little subtitle of my Incredibly Strange Dance Party is the roots of the roots. Maybe some of the later, more generic punk and hardcore and metal bands got their inspiration and influence from listening to other punk rock albums or hardcore stuff. But the O.G. punks didn’t have that option because those didn’t exist yet. When Dead Kennedys started in San Francisco playing the scene that revolved around Mabuhay Gardens, the peer pressure was not for every band to sound the same, it was for every band to sound different. Or no one was interested. Most of the audience was people in the other bands, it was very, very small. So people were drawing their inspiration from the Stooges, The Velvet Underground. Some of us weirder people were getting stuff from Captain Beefheart, and some people were really digging David Bowie and the New York Dolls and also James Brown, or the early Rolling Stones. Even even when one of those really rare Phil Specter girl group albums would pop up in the thrift store, it would wind up in a punk rocker’s apartment. Johnny Cash, you know, we were drawing from everything else. If you want to know some of my roots, then that’s what the Incredibly Strange Dance Party is for. I do it for fun, people are being very generous to me for this, but it’s also really cool to be able to play all those cool obscure 45’s I listened to in my bedroom really loud through a P.A.

You had influence in other ways too, like furries going Nazi Furs Fuck Off is a popular message.

I heard about that. Sounds like somebody actually needs to rewrite the words to make it more applicable to this problem. And address racism and everything else full on, as well as don’t believe the hype, like all the fake news shit that gets thrown at us from above as well as below. In this day and age when a lot of bands make little videos and put them up on Bandcamp or Youtube or whatever, if somebody’s going to make a Nazi Furs Fuck Off parody of the song, there damn well better be a video for it too. Seeing people in full blown furry regalia, rocking out or dancing out to Nazi Furs Fuck Off, that would go so fucking viral. It might bring in too many people, who knows, overnight to save the dying malls, there’ll be a furry version of Hot Topic opening up.

They try it, Hot Topic or even Walmart are kind of getting into it. But there’s this divide where the whole essence of it is having stuff custom made, you make your own fursona, you design your character and have somebody build it, it’s really involved and there’s just no way to fully industrialize it.

And it’s not all for sexual fetish reasons, is it?

That’s undeniably something that people do, because that’s part of being human, but I think it can bring honesty. People do it because they love it, like they love music…

In other words it’s totally wrong to stereotype furries, or plushies, and I guess there’s a difference, as all doing this for reasons of a sex fetish, and it may be that to some, but it’s not that to all, maybe even to a majority, right?

Even the ones that are into that, they’re also devoted fans as well. They’re not like one dimensional people, these are just really passionate people. They’re the nerds, and there’s a lot of gay people there, so it’s like double what got you beat up in high school.

Does it cross over and attract any ponies?

There’s a lot of crossover with a lot of things, I say if it was a Venn diagram, it would be kind of plaid. It’s a really broad concept. Here’s talking animals, you can plug that into anything.

If you can talk to the animals, does anybody show up as Doctor Doolittle?

There was a parade float themed like that in Australia at the Sydney Mardi Gras. And they go all out. They have a big budget for that.

Wow! Okay. I gotta roll.

Thank you for giving me so much time Jello, it’s a real honor. I can’t wait to meet you, I have my punk rat fursuit that’s on the flyer, so I’ll come up and say hi and I don’t bite.

There you go. This should be an interesting evening. Alright, take care.

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

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Dogbomb Leads Furry Fandom To Highest Fundraising For ALS Cure Event

November 14, 2018, 7:00 am
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Inspirational furry, Vet Tech, and champion of ALS awareness Dogbomb (Tony Barrett) has led the fandom with a notable achievement for charity.  In the second weekend of November, a small army of furry supporters came out for his Walk To Defeat ALS event in Southern California. Their goal was to raise awareness and research funds for this fatal disease with no cure (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease).

Patch O’Furr spoke to San Francisco Bay Area furry Zarafa Giraffe, after his return from the weekend in SoCal. It drew furries who drove from Northern California and even flew in from other states. Zarafa gave a rough estimate of 75-100 furries at the walk that he estimated as mid to high hundreds – making them a significant chunk of the whole event, as well as a third of the entire donations.

The walk synched with a FurBQ where Zarafa estimated 300 in attendance (perhaps the high end of size for local furmeets less formal than cons). Meeting many new members encouraged him to make more trips to participate. That’s the kind of snowball effect that builds up to bigger things, and gives them power to reach out and make the world better.

That fandom power propelled both Dogbomb and the furry team all the way to the top of the fundraising leaderboard on the alsa.org webpage.

See past stories from 2011 and 2018 about Dogbomb and his outstanding fursuiting.

Tony Barrett, the human behind the dog, was diagnosed with ALS in early 2018, putting this already well known member of fandom even further in its heart. He chronicles the disease’s progress with pictures and tweets on his Twitter, @dogbomb1. While ALS’s effects are devastating, as it weakens muscles to the point where the person is unable to do everyday tasks, Dogbomb has kept his sense of humor throughout, saying “ALS can Kiss My Fuzzy Butt!”.

For example, he posts a picture for every fall he has taken, with commentary of his surroundings on the floor:

He also has encouraged the fandom to not quit and keep moving forward, no matter what’s stacked against you. The message comes with videos and pictures of him walking around, well past the date of when he was told by doctors that a wheelchair would be necessary.

The fandom’s appreciation for Dogbomb isn’t just shown in the donations they have sent in. Many fans are also doing encouraging Tweets and responses to him.  Here’s ones from Scotty Minotaur, and Gale Frostbane, with Back Paw Scratcher echoing the sentiment:

The Walk to Defeat ALS is a yearly fundraiser put on by the ALS Association. Walks are scheduled throughout the US, at different locations through the year. Individuals and teams compete to raise the most money in sponsorships. This walk, in conjunction with the Ice Bucket Challenge, are two of many ways that the ALS Association raises funds and awareness for research to help treat and prevent ALS.

Dogbomb’s walk was November 10th, but they’re still accepting online donations. To donate to his campaign, search for “Tony Barrett” on the donations page.

Click the red donate button

Donate what you can

Please go to alsa.org  for more information on ALS, or to find your local ALSA chapter. You can help wherever you are.

According to Zarafa Giraffe, the fundraiser organizers told the Dogbomb team: “We don’t know how you’re doing this, but keep it going!” So what was the secret to their amazing achievement? Can science find out?

There’s no secret, it’s just an instinct. Call it a furry thing.

– Tuck Tucker and Patch O’Furr

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

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Hevisaurus: The Finnish Fursuiting Metal Band for Kids – by Tempe O’Kun

November 16, 2018, 7:00 am
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Welcome to Tempe O’Kun: author of Paranormal Furry Romance, anthropomorphic-animal Westerns, and a frequent guest of the site. I’m very happy he’s covering these literal dinosaur rockers. I loved seeing them, but never got to it because I don’t pay enough attention to the people and reptiles of Finland. Tempe had the head of the Hevisaurus fan club look over the article and he said it rocks. It reminds me, I just interviewed Jello Biafra, the punk legend, and he was curious if dinosaurs will come to his first time meeting furries as a DJ at their dance party. He also made funny reference to the cartoonish alien metal band GWAR – this is like an evolutionary cousin between them and furries. – Patch

Why isn’t heavy metal a genre for children?

Certainly plenty of metal songs aren’t kid-friendly —don’t go replacing Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood with Metalocalypse— but adult themes in music are a matter of lyrics and visuals. Nothing about the genre on a technical level limits it to adults. Extended guitar solos and amped-up distortion, no matter how hard core, will not cause your child to explode.

The main reason we don’t see much metal for kids is the same reason we’re only now seeing young kids at furry conventions: the genre is just too new. Heavy metal only emerged in the 1970s, which means 1) society hasn’t had time to get comfortable with it and 2) many fans are only now having kids.

Adapting a previously adults-only genre for kids might bring to mind the half-hearted and ultimately cringeworthy attempts at kid-friendly rap in the 90s, but Hevisaurus has serious metal chops. Established figures of the metal scene are hired to portray the characters, who perform both live and in studio. Household names like Megadeth, Nightwish, Sonata Artica all either share members or have worked with the band. If you listen to Hevisaurus without knowing Finnish, you’d never know it was intended for kids.

Check out this music video, which has scenes from the 2015 Hevisaurus film.

Hevisaurus – “Juranoid”

Nor does Hevisaurus discard metal imagery. The band’s mythology is full of magic, with the Hevisauri hatching because their fossilized eggs were struck by lightning and being raised by a witch who plays electric guitar. The band members themselves dress in heavy belts and spiked black leather, sporting dreadlocks and dyed hair. And, of course, they are dinosaurs.

So what do heavy metal dinosaurs sing about? Some of their music centers around epic quests to find lost friends. Others are about blowing too big of a bubble-gum bubble and floating into the sky, such as “Pirkolla on Purkkaa.”

Hevisaurus – “Pirkolla on Purkkaa”

Strange as this all sounds, Hevisaurus is quite accessible, even to someone like me who is only occasionally into metal. Much like listening to pop music from India or Japan, Hevisaurus songs are peppered with English words and phrases. If watching Aggretsuko has left you in a metal mood, I’d strongly recommend checking them out.

On the topic of the metal music of Aggretsuko, I recently did an interview with Jamison Boaz, who voices her during the karaoke scenes. You can listen to him react to Hevisaurus for the first time.

Tempo Talks – Jamison Boaz

Hevisaurus is, in many ways, a peek at the future. The future of fursuiting is certain to include CG-augmentation, as we see in the Hevisaurus film. Localization of music is only getting easier and more in-demand in an ever more globalized world—as we see with the Spanish, Swedish, and Hungarian versions of the project. And heavy metal, one of the most international genres of all, will be considered ever more a part of normal society.

If this all sounds like it’s totally up your alley, you can find an entire history of Hevisaurus by the furry fandom’s own Kraken D’Waggin, who is literally head of the Hevisaurus fan club and interviewed one of their producers.

Kraken D’Waggin – The History of Hevisaurus

Tempe O’Kun is a Siberian husky cowboy and furry novelist. He’s been cited on the Huffington Post, seen on CNN, and interviewed twice on NPR. He also writes and does interviews for the furry pop culture analysis YouTube channel Culturally F’d.

His books can be bought here: https://furplanet.com/shop/category.aspx?catid=219

You can check out his work on Culturally F’d here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTLM2s914zA_O2S6II_BCWw/videos

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A tribute to Fred Patten, 1940-2018

November 21, 2018, 7:00 am
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Fred in 1993 at a furry party at San Diego Comic Con. Lizard unknown. Photo by William Earl Haskell.

Fred Patten passed away on November 12, 2018 at age 78, leaving a legacy as historian and founder for the anime and furry fandoms. He was the star guest poster here. It’s hard to think of having no more Fred posts, but easy to say how much he influenced everyone. I’m really going to miss him sending in news tidbits or emails from curious fans, and asking if I can use them, then working out collaboration posts from his prompts. This was one of many, showing how he was sought out as an authority on anime and furry by people as far away as Malaysia.

Fred is remembered by many outside of furry. A memorial post on File770 highlights author David Gerrold calling Fred a “classic old-school fan”.  The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society’s memorial page has Melissa Conway saying: “He was, without a doubt, the dean of Furry Fandom.”

From fellow furry fans, Dronon posted a rememberence of Fred at Flayrah news.  So did Mark Merlino, cofounder of the first furry convention (ConFurence) and organizer of science fiction con parties that paved the way. Shortly before Fred’s passing, I ran into Mark and Rod of The Prancing Skiltaire (the long-running fan house in southern California) at PAWcon in San Jose. They had a table set up to remember gone but not forgotten fans. I think Fred deserves a place of honor in the middle of them all.

While I took the picture, another furry spotted Vicky Wyman and was sad to learn of her death earlier in 2018. With a fandom that can date back to the 1970’s, there’s now multiple generations here. Soon the torch will pass from founders to fresh and unknown talents, influencers and supporters. To all of them, Fred was a strong bridge between fandom old and fandom new.

Fred came from the heart of old fandom. That means: artists and writers doing intimate gatherings for movies or quiet sketchbook jams, with aspirations to rise from amateur to professional success. New fandom is a different animal – grown from those roots to a full-fledged, self-generating subculture, attracted by internet connection and glued by a thriving con scene.  Now thousands of young and more diverse members enjoy party vibes intensified by high energy event production, photogenic costuming, and crowd-pleasing performing, built on many more people and resources than before.

These changes weren’t always favored by Fred, after his stroke confined him to a hospital bed. But he didn’t just complain that writing could be overshadowed by fursuiting and partying. He focused on the future and kept writing as a main motivation.  He looked at how furry writers might find success outside of fandom, and was a force to bring it. In 2017 he edited several fiction anthologies, and his book Furry Fandom Conventions 1989-2015 (along with Joe Strike’s Furry Nation) became formally published, library-worthy furry-documenting that barely existed before. Fred never stopped being vital to things fans love.

At Dogpatch Press, Fred’s last review came 2 weeks before he passed away. Working with Fred made me the last of a series of publishers after others were less than reliable due to site closures or down time.  We started in 2014 when he contacted me as a newly-established site; he was having a hard time counting on others and was reluctant to give them time-sensitive posts. One of those was announcing a high-end fashion magazine, Flaunt, featuring Fred. I offered to host and help with whatever he wanted to send, and was proud to give him a voice and bring it to you.

Fred began to steadily crank out submissions amounting to over 400 of 1,000 posts (at this time) on Dogpatch Press. Grateful credit goes to site editor David (Pup Matthias) for handling a great deal of editing for those when I was busy with other work.  Some were reprints of book reviews that fell off the web. Most were his new reviews, plus history and deep looks at furry happenings. He was frequently sending new material of his own, although occasionally I suggested topics I thought would suit him well or had books sent to him. I requested a comprehensive list of every furry thing he ever published online, so we could get it in one place (it’s done up to 2016, with the rest waiting to list.)

Fred had a lot going on besides furry stuff. Anime fandom sites gave tributes for how much of what they love is thanks to Fred helping to import anime to the USA. That led to his 1990’s work for Streamline Pictures with historian Jerry Beck of Cartoonresearch.com. When Fred moved on from the job, he still kept a strong relationship with Jerry, and posted over 200 columns at the site.

Jerry left a note on the 2017 finale of Fred’s “Funny Animals and More” column:

Fred Patten passed away on November 12th 2018 – roughly a year and a half after his filed his final post here on Cartoon Research. His work will live on in the numerous books, articles and blog posts he left behind, his life will be remembered by his many friends and colleagues – of which I was one of. When Carl Macek and I started Streamline Pictures in 1989 there was only one person we knew we needed to assist us – Fred. He became out first employee, and was with the company to its bitter end (Fred wrote a series of posts for this blog that recount that experience). Farewell Fred. You are off to a better place – and made the world you left behind a better place with your presence. – Jerry Beck

The Los Angeles Times – November 18, 2018

Jerry also answered my private message about Fred:

I knew Fred very well. We were friends since the 1970s and I employed him to work at Streamline Pictures from around 1991 till he finally left when money ran out in the early 2000s. We remained good friends after that – we were colleagues in an animation apartment, APATOONS, and he wrote entries for my books ANIMATION ART and THE ANIMATED MOVIE GUIDE – as well as five years on weekly columns on my blog CARTOON RESEARCH. I am not a furry, so we did not talk about that much. We knew each other over anime, manga comic books, classic TV and movie animation and science fiction books. Fred was well rounded as a fan, as he had many interests. Our world is a better place because of Fred’s research and writings. He will be missed.

Fred’s sister, Sherry, was his closest real life helper. She told me:

In my files for Fred, I found the document he sent me over 2 years ago, with a long list of names and companies he wants notified “if I die”… I’m sending you the info Fred wrote at the end of the list of names… (teasingly).  BUT, you might want to post it on your site for your readers to enjoy, Fred Patten’s FINAL COMMENT.

From Fred:

If I can choose my own epigraph, I’ve always been partial to “Here lies poor Fred, who was alive and is dead”, the opening of the notorious anonymous epigraph for Frederick, Prince of Wales and father of the future George III, who died on March 20, 1751 to general indifference:

“Here lies poor Fred who was alive and is dead,
Had it been his father I had much rather,
Had it been his sister nobody would have missed her,
Had it been his brother, still better than another,
Had it been the whole generation, so much better for the nation,
But since it is only Fred who was alive and is dead,
There is no more to be said!”

Crown Prince Frederick (born Friedrich Ludwig in Hanover) was known for his amateur painting and spending all his time living in luxury, playing cricket, and for publically despising his father, George II. At least Frederick lived off his own royal allowance and money borrowed from rich friends, unlike his father and siblings who supported themselves in flamboyant luxury on public tax money.  So Frederick was considered inoffensive but not disliked; the best of a bad family.

Best wishes;

Fred

Sherry’s relationship with Fred is remembered by Melissa Conway at File770:

I also want to acknowledge the debt that all us who loved Fred owe to his amazing sister Sherrill (aka Sherry) whose dedication to Fred’s well-being during the past twelve and a half years went beyond what anyone could have expected one sibling to do for another. It was Sherry who drove Fred the two hours each way to Eaton once a month, undertaking the arduous transfer of Fred from her van to his wheelchair (and back) without complaint. Sherry was also Fred’s medical advocate, making sure he always got the best care; his research assistant, literally serving as his “right hand” when he needed to take notes; his librarian, making almost daily trips to the L.A. Public Library to keep up with Fred’s voracious reading; his art curator, dedicating a room in her apartment to his large art collection; his IT specialist, making sure his laptop was in good working order at all times; his patron, purchasing the van to transport him, and all the little extras that he wanted or needed; and his best friend.

I extend my deepest condolences to Sherry and Fred’s other sister,Loel, his two nieces, two grand-nephews, and all his treasured friends in Furry Fandom and at LASFS, his “true home” in the world. RIP, Fred! We’ll miss you.

Here’s Fred and Sherry in 1955, in her favorite photo she sent for the 2017 Christmas present I made for Fred from furry fandom. There’s many tributes there.

Furry author Jako Malan sent this in:

In the words of the Afrikaans poet and songwriters Koos du Plessis :

as dit gedaan is, en verby,
die aarde weer sy erfdeel kry,
sal hierdie kluisenaar in my
nog iewers op ‘n boekrak bly

(my translation)

when all is done, and past,
the earth claimed back its own,
will this hermit within me
still live on someone’s bookshelf

Rest in Peace, Mr. Patten.  You will live on in many hearts, minds and on many bookshelves for a long time to come.

Erdwolf from Cape Town, South Africa

Farewell to Fred – he preferred not to play a fursona, so I like to think that he’s out there somewhere sharing stories with Stan Lee, who left at the same time – surrounded by the more fuzzy of us while they shed up the place, sneezing and laughing about it, and being the scribe for everyone while they plan new adventures together.

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CNN’s This Is Life is amazing TV – relations with the media – and more positive furry stories.

November 23, 2018, 7:00 am
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CNN’s This is Life with Lisa Ling: Furry Nation aired last Sunday. As Furries do, some loved it and some hated it. That’s not surprising. When the critically acclaimed show (built around exploring the different corners of people’s lives) tweeted their season five episodes, fandom freaked out. Furries were tweeting about how CNN would cover them in the same season with MS-13, meth, screen addiction, and gender fluidity. Or how Furries complained that Anthro Northwest was letting TV do recording at their convention. Or how this episode was either the second coming, or the dawn of the apocalypse.

Boy, that changed overnight. If it sounds like I’m salty, I am to a degree. The reactions leading up to the premiere were just tiring. Many furries painted all journalists as TMZ tabloids looking for the next juicy clickbait headline, but looking at an episode shows Lisa Ling being a thoughtful reporter who wants to show the human stories behind the topics she covers. (You can see all episodes legally with a TV subscription here.)

It’s funny to see Furries wanting to share their stories and promote the good this community can do; yet push away anyone wanting to report on it. It lets rumors continue to define us. Of course, as I’m writing this, the BBC has done a piece about the hacking of an adult furry site many haven’t heard of. It’s actually a relatively neutral story in comparison to what happened to Ashley Madison (the website devoted to helping people cheat in their relationships), but with buxom zebras and scantily clad lionesses instead of mistresses/guys on the side (or whatever). Beyond the furry aspect, it’s neither positive nor negative, it’s just there. Perhaps those rumors are losing power just from becoming old and familiar.

It’s not without merit to be skeptical about the media covering this fandom. YouTuber Quartz Husky did a video about cable news coverage:

The issue as I see it, isn’t pointing out that there are people who will use us for sensational clicks. The issue is then finding positive examples to compare and contrast for what we, as a community want. The dialogue about the media vs. the fandom is so black-and-white, that any form of coverage is seen as bad. It leaves very little room for us to showcase who we are because there are no “good” reporters.

But Furry Nation is amazing! It’s a moving hour of television showing what some attentive furs have been preaching for years. It showcases three different, and personal stories, that reflect how the fandom is a wonderful outlet to be who we are. Captain Boones, Leilia Spaniel, and Asheda did an amazing job of sharing who they are and what a positive impact the Furry Community has made for them. Personally, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for putting yourselves out there. You each deserve GOH recognition to at least one con for this.

As for any negative to the show, the main complaint is how it lacks representation of POC or queer Furries. There’s also the classic “all they cared about was fursuiters and art.” These can be valid criticisms, however, the topic of Furry is so broad with thousands of different subgroups and people and experiences, that trying to distill them into a mere hour of television is simply impossible. Consider that this special covered Fursonas, anxiety, basic history, the military, PTSD, handicaps, hybrid fursonas, cons, panels, sex, popufurs, dances, kids, and marriage at cons, all while keeping the focus on the three main personalities. The way it never loses focus is frankly pure skill, and at the end of the day Furry Nation is a positive no matter what. Although if anyone wants to be represented, after all the resistance, next time I suggest you raise your hand.

This is the biggest positive coverage of our community I can name, but it shouldn’t and won’t be the last.

It’s big, but not an anomaly. There’s already a lot of positive coverage to sink your teeth into and share. So let me showcase some more examples from the media and from members in our own community.

Furries Surprise Strangers For The First Time from BuzzfeedVideos

I love pointing out that Buzzfeed has been a positive source about furries. Say what you will about Buzzfeed, but I think they have always been positive like that. Check out this video released back in August. It actually brings up the topic about POC furries, and has one of the purest “derp” reactions to meeting Furries I’ve seen.

The Truth About Furries: Fandom Not Fetish From VICE

Before CNN, Vice took on the topic of Furries over a year ago. It’s another great piece showing what our community is about. As well as featuring the wonderful Arrkay from Culturally F’d.

Furries: A Documentary by Eric Risher

Let’s look at creators within the community spreading the fluffy word. This doc by Eric Risher came out two years ago. It’s an overview of the fandom for those who want to understand what we are about. It screened at several cons to positive reception. You can order a physical copy, or watch on demand. Eric is still doing great work in the fandom. His next project, Making a Musical Tail, chronicles the play created by Fox Amoore and Pepper Coyote at BLFC 2018. It will premiere at Midwest FurFest. If you aren’t already too busy, come to the premiere and support one of our own creators.

Trans Voices by Ash Coyote

Ash Coyote is a Trans Furry YouTuber doing short advice videos about Furry, transgender topics, how they can overlap, and gaming videos with her husband. Right now, Ash is doing a series called Trans Voices. It’s a project to reach out to her community and share their personal journeys. While not “fully” Furry, Ash is providing a platform for us to learn and understand. Very few Furry YouTubers are doing that.

Culturally F’d

Here’s a familiar face! It’s Arrkay’s education series that explores the fandom. This is what you would get if Idea Channel was Furry. This informative and well researched video series is a go-to for those curious what the fandom is about.

These are just a few I could name. There are a lot of more positive stories out there than one might think, whether it’s CNN or a small YouTuber. I hope they help brighten up your day. That’s all I have to say. Until next time Fluffer Nutters, have a nice day.

–Pup Matthias

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Furry fandom “hide the yiff” alert system will create a clean image for the media

November 28, 2018, 7:19 am
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ThiccPup was relaxing at home when his phone began to bark a series of woofs that spelled HIDE YIFF in Morse code. Thanks to home defense preparation and training drills, he was ready for action. He buttoned a dress shirt over his “Fuck Bitches Get Scritches” t-shirt, while his bookshelf flipped around to switch his werewolf erotica with a selection of sports magazines.  His bed sank into a recess in the floor and a new one flipped down from the wall, hiding his plushies, Paw Patrol sheets, Tsaiwolf daki, and the framed art of an anthropomorphic femboy husky blowing a blushy jock rottweiler. His Furry Fuel energy drink was safely stacked behind a jar of mayonnaise.

“I got nervous when my mom saw my lunch on the floor, but I told her I was just dogsitting. Close call!” said ThiccPup.

Being caught with adult content has dire consequences for some furries. In California, one was forced to tell their grandma what a tailplug was for. In Pittsburgh, a con security SWAT team was deployed for a pup play lobby incident, with orders to neuter on sight. The threat of public exposure has never been so high.

Cleaning up fandom image has been so slow, that it’s been constantly discussed since the 1980’s.  Some argue that sexual stigma is such a threat that the entire fandom will stop growing and is on the verge of collapse, just like when everyone didn’t listen to that in the 90’s and 2000’s. However, thanks to a campaign by clandestine furries in government chambers of power, now the dual sides are being kept safely separated by the Hide The Yiff alert system.

This system is built on modern technology that brings Amber Alerts, emergency disaster warnings, Shelter In Place advisories, the National Terror Threat scale (with levels Red, Redder, Reddest, Maroon, Vermillion, and Fuschia,) the Presidential Alert system, the Bat Signal, the President’s Embarrassing Us Again warning, Nextdoor’s OMG I Saw A Stray Cat Or Vagrant Urgent Alert, Kaiju Beacons, and the Watch Out Boozy Is Coming To Dinner advisory network.

Some critics aren’t sold on it.  Kelloggs cereal mascot Tony The Tiger calls it a scheme to protect the furry admirers who ruin his PTSD recovery.  Mr. The Tiger said, “Last week I heard someone talk about tying their shoes with a tight knot, and it gave me flashbacks. I can’t even hear the word “milk” without hissing.”

How did this develop? Sources say Uncle Kage, CEO of Anthrocon, started it by lobbying Pittsburgh, PA officials to install combination mass surveillance/dog-whistle devices on his turf in the city. When contacted at his home, he denied this and asked if we wanted a family friendly chat. He offered one comment to print: “The media has a vivid imagination. If furries did naughty behavior, how could some hypothetical “system” help hide it? It would be all over the internet already. Clearly we are dealing with an urban legend being spread for salacious ratings.”

According to officials, the new system is only meant for furries, so if you aren’t in the fandom, you won’t need to bother about hiding anything. However it’s still being tested and might have a few bugs. They advise that if your phone starts barking with code that hypnotizes you, and then you wake up with an obsessive urge to watch Zootopia and wear a tail, don’t worry – you can leave the fandom as many times as you want.

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

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Corgi Events Is the Fandom’s First Convention Management Company – By Grubbs Grizzly

November 29, 2018, 7:00 am
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Grubbs Grizzly is known for his “Ask Papabear” advice column, and Greymuzzles group popular among the original generation of fandom. He’s at work on The Furry Book and made The Good Furry Award for furs who demonstrate outstanding community spirit. Nominate one for a $1000 prize! Thanks to Grubbs for this guest article.

Corgi Events appeared here for their con Aquatifur. They made the fandom applaud in August 2018 when Denfur filled the vacancy left by RMFC. All eyes were on them when Denfur’s first year beat attendance estimates by double, higher than RMFC would have grown if it still existed. More than a mere numbers success, it represented fans rejecting bad behavior that ruined its predecessor, and embracing the ideal of a community. For that I would give Corgi Events all the support I can. – Patch 

Corgi Events Is the Fandom’s First Convention Management Company
By Grubbs Grizzly

The history of furry conventions is an interesting one indeed, one that was recently written about by the late, great furry historian and book critic Fred Patten in his Furry Fandom Conventions, 1989-2015. As anyone who has read that book or is familiar with convention history knows, it all started with Confurence 0 in Costa Mesa, California, in 1989. After a couple years, new conventions started opening their doors. The phenomenon has snowballed until now there are nearly 100 conventions worldwide.

Up until recently, one thing fur cons had in common was that they were operated independently of one another. Often these would be organized by local fans, perhaps sharing crew with other events, but based in one community. Each would be organized by—typically—a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the United States.

But the other day my attention was drawn to a company called Corgi Events LLC, when I heard its announcement of a new fur con in Irvine, California, to be called Golden State Fur Con. GSFC is debuting next year, along with another Corgi-created con, the Painted Desert Fur Con in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Reading this, bells started ringing in my fuzzy bear ears. Was Corgi trying to replace Califur, which failed to hold a convention this year, and may or may not in 2019? And Phoenix (Scottsdale is a suburb) already has the young Arizona Fur Con. Next, I saw that Corgi also runs DenFur, which has effectively replaced the failed Rocky Mountain Fur Con. The chosen locations look strategic, and multi-con management over distance is a departure from the furry norm.

This merited looking into.

It didn’t take much online research to discover who was behind it all: a twenty-nine-year-old furry named Corey Wood (fursona name Treble Vandoren). Treble is based in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He got his start in the Brony fandom (his company runs Ponyville Ciderfest and Whinny City Ponycon, as well as anime cons). He has a bachelor’s degree in Business-Finance from the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee. He started with Ponyville Bronies LLC, which morphed into Corgi Events LLC. It opened its first fur con, AquatiFur, at the Wisconsin Dells in 2017.

And so, I contacted Treble through his Twitter account and he kindly agreed to an interview.

Grubbs: Hi, Treble. Can you tell me a little about yourself and how you got into event organizing?

Treble: I am 29 currently, and I began event organizing back in 2007 at an anime convention called Anime Central (acen.org) in Rosemont, Illinois. That stemmed from my desire to want to see the behind the scenes when I was just a fan of anime and was an attendee from 2003-2007. I joined their staff as a volunteer, of course, and staffed for them for almost nine years.

In that process, I had moved to Milwaukee and still had the staff bug as us staffers call it. From there, I joined Anime Milwaukee in 2011, to which I am still their convention chair to this day (2013-2019) and helped them organize and found the current 501(c)(3) nonprofit ECPS, Inc.

Through that I started my job at Lemonbrat Studios, a fursuit-making company, back in early 2013. For them, I traveled to conventions, selling their product (www.lemonbrat.com). Throughout that I traveled to MLP cons, furry cons, etc.

Well, that led me to becoming a Brony, getting into that fandom, and my head space was “Well, I run an anime con, I can surely run a My Little Pony con!” (That thought came through during Brony Con, August of 2013.)

From that point, I created Ponyville Bronies LLC on November 19, 2013. And so, like most small business owners, I took the little I had in my savings, and the credit cards I had, and started up Ponyville Ciderfest, the first convention run by Ponyville Bronies LLC.

I wanted to run off the LLC for-profit model vs. the nonprofit model as over the years I saw how nonprofit conventions had been run and noticed that I wanted to create more of an onus to make the con successful and give people more time to dedicate to these cons to make them as awesome as they could be.

Now, later in 2015, becoming a furry, I took that same train of thought into running furry cons when I started AquatiFur in Wisconsin Dells (I literally ran that con because I thought it would be neat to run a con at a waterpark, and I looove the Kalahari XD).

Grubbs: Okay, leading perfectly to my next question: as you know, furcons have been solo events run by 501(c)(3) groups mostly. Thanks for the above explanation. I first heard of you when I saw the announcement of Golden State Furcon. So, your philosophy is, perhaps, that a for-profit might do a better job at running conventions than a nonprofit?

Treble: Do I think a for-profit will run better than a Non-Profit? I believe that it will in the regard that someone’s livelihood is on the line, and like any business or skill/trade a furry has to offer (whether you’re a musician, artist, or an event planner like myself), it is better when the risk versus reward financially is there. When you get free art versus paying $110 for art, you’ll get, in my mind, better, more quality art. This isn’t to say a nonprofit convention won’t put 100% into it, but if you can dedicate your time like a part-time job to this, I find it to be more beneficial to the attendees to have that sole dedication to the conventions.

I feel that as we as a company grow, we have a small set of staff who are experienced, and by having that pre-set experience (look at DenFur, for example) you can have a really well-organized and successful con year one, instead of year three or four.

Grubbs: The finances of running a nonprofit con are challenging, to say the least. I’ve always kind of suspected that–in addition to a genuine ambition to be charitable–the nonprofits were kind of artificially set up to donate to animal charities so that they could declare themselves charities and not pay taxes. Could you detail a little bit more the advantages of a for-profit venture over a nonprofit?

Treble: You can 100% donate to a charity and be for-profit. The idea of being nonprofit is the tax benefit for the organization because you aren’t then paying into the con. That’s really the major benefit of being nonprofit: less taxes, more companies willing to give discounts on larger purchases (computers, registers, etc.).

The for-profit advantage is that there is more freedom to get money from sponsors to put on the convention, and the freedom of privatizing your finances (not that I do or care to; I like being transparent because of the furry worry of a for-profit running away with all that furry money XD), and there isn’t as much red tape with having a board etc. etc.

Grubbs: I believe that you are the first company/organization to set out to run multiple furcons. This is a significant development in the evolution of furry conventions. There is already a little chatter in social media- -a fear that this will eventually result in the corporatization (Merriotification) of the fandom regarding cons. How would you allay such fears?

Treble: To answer the fear of corporatizing furry cons, I don’t think it will ever get to that point for 2 reasons: 1) The furry mentality that running for-profit is bad (when it’s all really the same and I could go on for days about why for-profit is both nice and neat for furries); 2) The largest players in the convention scene (MFF, AC, BLFC, FWA, TFF) are all non-profit and don’t intend to change that way.

My goals in running multiple cons are:

  • Provide cons for furries who want it (usually in an area where enough furries expressed interest to have a con and see that the con would survive)
  • Reduce costs on overhead on large purchases to make these cons easier to run, more affordable, so that I can pump more money into awesome guests/programming/themes, etc.
  • To be able to give event-planning furs the joy of doing what they love as a passion

Grubbs: Let me say now that I am very impressed that an under-30 fellow like yourself is creating such an ambitious project. You are, basically, creating a Convention-Planning Organization. I have already heard good things about DenFur. Congratulations to you.

I’ve noted that DenFur is basically replacing Rocky Mountain Furcon, which closed its doors a while back. Golden State Furcon is similarly occupying a region where Califur is currently either floundering or dead. You’ve also got Painted Desert Furcon in the same city as the rather young Arizona Furcon. Are you targeting markets deliberately where you see struggling furcons?

Treble: Thank you! I always told myself that if you want to make it in life, you need to be in charge of your own destiny and that sitting around at a Wal-Mart (where I worked in the past) wasn’t going to cut it XD.

On the market question: I am choosing places to put cons on in two different markets: struggling markets where a con unfortunately had to close its doors, and the furs in that area are saying there is a demand for a con to still be there (such as RMFC and CaliFur); and markets of general demand where local furs expressed wanting either a con for the first time (such as AquatiFur and a couple of other locations not announced yet that are coming) and areas that desire another option for a convention (such as Painted Desert).

Grubbs: By the way, I’ve heard furries saying they’d like a furcon in Tampa, Florida.

Treble: I’ve had furs that asked for cons in Nebraska; South Carolina; Buffalo, New York; Nashville, Tennessee; etc. I’m not sure if it’s because they know I am skilled in this or there is a desire to actually have a con there; that is where my team goes in and researches.

I would look into Tampa, as you suggest, to see how much they want a con, and if it doesn’t step on Megaplex’s toes, I’d run a con there for those who want it.

I do work with all the con chairs to make sure I am not stepping on people’s toes, too, when it comes to location and dates.

Grubbs: I’m assuming things are going well with Aquatifur, Denfur, and your other conventions or else you wouldn’t be seeking to expand. How do you go about finding the staff for a new con and getting it off the ground? That is, is this a centralized process or a process where you recruit in the area and coordinate it all back in Kenosha?

Treble: Finding staff in the area: once we have already gone into the state chats on Telegram in that area, we reach out to the few who super-expressed interest in having the con in that location, and we ask them to be some of the core staff for that convention. We have 6-7 Corgi Event LLC staff (which I’m the only one from Kenosha) that we coordinate on Discord, and we have standardized some of our processes (dealers sign up forms, registration, site layout, panel application forms, staff sign up forms, etc.).

From there we hire about 80% local staff, with the intention to always have a vice chair who is local because they are on the ground, so to speak, in that area of that community. I 100% rely on that community to make the con feel like their own (from programming ideas, to theme, etc.) so that while the core structure of the con is there, I want them to all have their own feel as if it was individual companies running these cons.

Getting it off the ground is just another cog in the wheel from getting local artists to finding local guest of honors, getting the website/Telegram/Twitter stuff up, and off it goes! Done.

Grubbs: So income for Corgi comes purely from ticket sales, booth rentals, and…? Will your business model affect registration fee prices?

Treble: Our business model doesn’t affect registration fee prices! Since our business model is to run enough cons to lower the overhead (don’t have to rent A/V tech or reg equip, etc.), which means that savings are passed on to the attendees. We price our cons to be comparable based on the size of the con and the area it’s in (for example, we don’t price ourselves above FC in Cali for Golden State or price ourselves higher that BLFC for DenFur). We as Corgi just do fun and creative things that cons haven’t before (like have a $1000 badge but have it include a two-bedroom suite for three to four nights, and it saves the attendee $300 by booking it that way).

Income: Badge sales, dealers den booths, artist alley booths, art show panels, merchandise/con store sales, and hotel kick back (we get $10 per night booked back to the con). That’s a normal clause in every contract for nonprofit or for-profit, by the way.

We are looking to expand our operations into production rental, too (why have all this A/V gear sitting around collecting dust when it can be rented to other furry cons at little cost?)

Grubbs: Do you have anything you would like to add that we haven’t covered?

Treble: I think the biggest thing to add is that as a for-profit, we are still here for the furries, by the furries, and that will never change. All of us at Corgi Events LLC are approachable, fun, easygoing people who are here to just put on cons like a fursuit maker makes suits. We offer our skills to a community that wants cons, and we are super-grateful for everyone in this community who has accepted us and this idea, and we ask for their continued support as we make more kick-ass cons!

You can learn more about Corgi events by visiting the websites http://www.aquatifur.com, https://www.denfur.org, https://www.eventbrite.com/e/golden-state-fur-con-2019-tickets-50772286275, and https://painteddesertfc.com.

Grubbs Grizzly (Kevin Hile) is an author, freelance writer, and advice columnist at www.askpapabear.com.

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CNN’s This is Life with Lisa Ling: Furry Nation – review by Joe Strike

December 4, 2018, 7:00 am
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Here’s a guest article from Joe Strike, a first-wave furry greymuzzle, writer about animation for Animation World Network, and author of Furry Nation, the first history of fandom in mainstream bookstores. His website shows work with TV cartoons you may know. He sent this in around the time of MFF. (- Patch)

Our community had been buzzing for months about the “furry” episode of CNN’s This is Life with Lisa Ling before it finally aired on November 18th. I kept my fingers crossed; like most other furs I’ve been watching the media get us wrong for years. (The primary reason I wrote Furry Nation was to correct the record; as I occasionally told people, “I’m tired of outsiders getting it all wrong—I decided it was time for someone in the furry community to get it all wrong.”)

But what really piqued my curiosity was that several people told me the episode was titled… “Furry Nation”!

Okay, what’s going on here? Shortly before the episode aired, I emailed the production company to ask, wazzup? how did you happen to borrow my title?, to which they responded:

Thank you for reaching out!  Your book sounds amazing! We actually learned about this community from Lisa’s viewers. It was a suggestion someone sent in. Our research and facts came from FurScience. 

Well, thank you “someone” for the free plug for Furry Nation The Book. (Said title never appeared in the episode by the way; I assume it was only used in the episode’s listings, although a search of cnn.com failed to discover it.)

Lacking cable, I caught up with the episode later via a relative’s DVR. After taking a few days to digest a second viewing, I’m finally ready to share my take on Lisa Ling’s take on Furry.

My initial reaction: irritation. Irritation over the episode’s focus on furs with crippling anxieties or physical challenges; irritation at Lisa Ling’s first-person narration and numerous cutaways of her looking variously concerned, empathetic, and/or proud; irritation at the episode’s emotion-telegraphing musical cues (ominous, poignant, uplifting, cute…).

Then I realized…yes, this is exactly right. Ling was the viewer’s stand-in, representing someone completely unfamiliar with Furry*, or perhaps only familiar with our kinky sex-prevert media reputation. The dramatic wrappings were an empathy weapon, a way of giving the episode an emotional charge beyond the ability of a straightforward news segment to provide.

* Shortly after the show aired, I explained Furry mentioned it to a Kinko’s staffer printing a photograph of my fursuited self; the fellow had simply never heard of Furry – so there are more than a few folks like that out there.

In fact, it many ways, the show was a flat-out advocacy piece on behalf of Furry, challenging that misconception and out to enlighten folks who’ve fallen for it.

The episode’s emotional, somewhat manipulative overtones rankled at first, beginning with Ling’s “what if you were so anxious you had to isolate yourself from society…meet three people who overcame the odds by doing something you might think is a joke…” Then, accompanied by spooky music, “we’re setting out on a strange trip,” as we see the first of many (and I mean many) shots of an escalator-riding Ling marveling at fursuiters.

Old home movie footage follows, kids hugging mascot-suited Disney characters. “Do you do you remember watching cartoons as a kid and the happiness it brought you? What if you never grew out of that feeling?” It’s a comment that IMHO suggests furs are immature—what if we’ve grown to appreciate animated anthro animals and cartoons in general on a deeper level?

Admirably—and repeatedly—the episode repeatedly challenges the Furry = kink misconception, both in Ling’s voice-over (“mainstream media has painted this community as a deviant sex cult”) and in comments from various furs including Sam “Uncle Kage” Conway. (“Do sex deviants exist in the world? Yes, but that doesn’t characterize what this community’s about.”)

“Community;” throughout the episode, Ling refers to us as a community, never a “fandom” or even “subculture” (a bit of shorthand I used in my book’s subtitle). That choice of words alone made this episode a breakthrough.

The episode goes onto deservedly celebrate “the extreme creativity of the furry world,” compare fursuiting to mainstream-accepted sci-fi/superhero cosplay and point out that unlike more mainstream fandoms, furs create their own characters.

Lots and lots of furry art appears on camera as Ling explains fursonas, adding furs “sometimes get a fursuit made to match.” Even with that qualifying “sometimes,” the episode visually focused almost exclusively on fursuiters, once again suggesting fursuiting and Furry are synonymous, with only the occasional glimpse of a non-suited or tail-wearing fur. (Ling even noted Kage wore a labcoat in lieu of a presumed roach suit to reflect his blattodean fursona.) An interview, even a brief one with a high-profile furry artist would’ve helped reveal the central role of art in the furry community.

I realize a single 45-minute episode of a human interest-themed TV series can’t possibly cover every aspect of a large and varied non-mainstream community: apart from furry art, I’ve heard complaints that LGBTQ furs were conspicuous by the absence as were spiritually inclined furs.

Ling focused on a trio of furs challenged by personal issues, all of whom found acceptance and liberation in Furry: Painfully shy Lindsay, PTSD-afflicted “hermit” Sean and illness-wracked Allison. All three had what I call the “furry gene” common to most furs: a pre-existing interest in anthropomorphic characters prior to discovering the community; all three created fursonas and fursuits that liberated them from their circumscribed lives: Lindsay became the “bubbly and outgoing” canine “Lalia,” Sean the dapper, dreadlocked lion “Captain Boones” and Allison “Ashaeda,” a dragon sub-species known as a “Darss Edar.”

Their stories converge at the 2017 Anthro Northwest Convention (indicating the episode had been in the works for well over a year). We again see Ling riding that escalator to Furryland, “entering a strange world and I have no idea what to expect. “Evidently it’s not a furry convention without a furry parade” she says, unaware they’re usually referred to as fursuit parades. (Not the show’s only boo-boo: the end credits acknowledge “The Conference Archive” as a source of early convention video, a typo likely resulting from “ConFurence” absent from CNN computer’s spell-check vocabulary.) She drops in on a few folks in their hotel rooms, in what I can assure you without a doubt were totally absolutely, completely unexpected surprise visits. (I mean if you instantly open your door on the first knock and a camera crew follows your visitor in…that happens to me at least twice a day.) We meet “Telephone,” the original and well-known Dutch Angel Dragon. A clip from one of her YouTube videos is shown barrel-distorted as if filmed off a TV screen, a clever visual device to distance it from the episode’s own footage. Telephone (“Deanna” IRL) admits she too dealt with anxiety when younger. “Conventions are like a giant family reunion for all of us.” —hear hear!

Ling deserves extra-special kudos for spending time at a session where the nervous parents of very young furs are assured Furry is a safe place for their kids, underscoring her “furry’s not a deviant kink scene” message. Her quick history summary (including Kage pointing out “it started with a group of cartoon fans getting together”) and referring to “90 independent events organized every year and hundreds of thousands of furry fans worldwide” is spot-on.

So yes, Life with Lisa Ling: Furry Nation was a major step forward in mainstream Furry coverage… I just wish it hadn’t been so focused on the idea that our community is primarily a refuge for damaged souls (still, a far better misconception than “kinky s-x cult”) and more on her closing words, “furries are just people who want to take a little vacation from day to day life.”

…that said, once upon a time, before I discovered Furry, before Furry even existed, I used to feel my fascination with anthropomorphic and cartoon animals, the idea of transforming into one, was the only “genuine” part of me, something I kept deeply hidden, while everything I presented to the public was a shallow façade. Thanks to Furry (and quite a few years of therapy) I don’t feel that way anymore.

– Joe Strike

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

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Sonicfox Just Won Best Esports Player – and the Future of Furry is Bright – by Tempe O’Kun

December 7, 2018, 7:00 am
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Welcome to Tempe O’Kun, author of Paranormal Furry Romance, anthropomorphic-animal Westerns, and a frequent guest of the site.

You might not be into pro gaming. Maybe your interest in gaming is limited to what you play yourself and the occasional piece of fan art. That’s cool.

But let me tell you why you should care.

  • Furries are visible.

You might not have noticed, but we’re rainbow animal-people. Midwest Fur Fest just passed 10,000 in attendance, a world record for furry cons. In some ways, the fandom will always be our weird little club, but we’re not some unknown niche anymore. Not when one of us breaks into the trending topics on Twitter.

So somebody is going to be the face of the fandom—or rather, various people are at different times. And we’re lucky that our two recent high-profile furries (SonicFox at the Game Awards and Bucktown Tiger on Jeopardy) have been really upstanding guys.

And it’s not just a public persona. As it happens, I talked to SonicFox at MFF last weekend. I ducked away from my book launch for a few minutes to say hey. And, even in suit, he made a little time to stop and chat with me. Just as you see in the video, he comes off as a sweet and sincere person. He’s absolutely someone we want as a go-to example of a furry.

  • He’s on the right side of history.

“I’m black, I’m gay, and I’m a furry. Pretty much everything a Republican hates.”

– SonicFox, in his acceptance speech

It’s easy to forget, but this isn’t just a furry posting on social media. He’s speaking to a crowd of hundreds, to a global audience of millions. That’s the big time.

Esports hasn’t been around for a century, like the rest of professional sports. We’re not used to thinking of it as a major platform. SonicFox is a public figure, a champion, a role model. He’s also the exact sort of person the fascists, bigots, and other primitive types are terrified of. He’s living proof that the injustices of the past are bugs, not features. A black, gay, furry gamer has nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to apologize for.

And SonicFox lives that.

“bitch shut the fuck up it literally is the most hypocritical shit ever when you can’t even be civil yourself let alone take accountability on your racist bullshit that you’re called out on daily. and no you’re not being debated. I don’t fuck with nazi-apologists”

– SonicFox @SonicFox5000 11:37 PM – 22 Aug 2018

Pseudo-centrist cowards might call that “being political.” But existing as anything but a straight cis white man has always been political. In an age where losers whose entire identity is built on nothing but being a straight cis white man are desperate to do anything to stay in power, your life is now political too.

We gain nothing by letting others tell us who we should be and what we are worth. The arc of the moral universe bends toward justice not as a natural law, but under the weight of a million tiny acts of bravery and compassion. Our acts.

Too long have we allowed ourselves to be silenced to protect the delicate feelings of our oppressors. No more. We’re the future. Folks like SonicFox know it. We aren’t going to debate for our right to exist. We deserve to be here.

  • You gotta see it to be it.

Everybody needs heroes. Not perfect idols, but folks who exhibit qualities we never realized we could ourselves embody. Without heroes, we have to reinvent the wheel for every aspect of our character growth. Be they fictional or real, heroes bear the touches that illuminate the possible.

SonicFox as the public face of the furry fandom does meaningful good for our image as a community. What’s more, the fact that a sweet gay black guy with an interest in cartoon animals speaks to hard-won progress. Countless young people watched that acceptance speech and saw someone like themselves. They found a hero. They’ll have one more source of inspiration for their own personal ethics fursona. And that means they can be maybe heroes for somebody else sometime, in the most public of spectacles or the most private of gestures. That’s how civilization progresses.

Today was a big deal. Not just because one of us made it into the limelight, but because a man took the stage and was celebrated for being true to himself, for being sincere in his passions, and for being brave in his love.

That’s a big deal for furries.

That’s a big deal for people of color and LGBT folks.

That’s a big deal for all of us.

– Tempo O’Kun

Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these. Please consider supporting Dogpatch Press on Patreon.  You can access exclusive stuff for just $1, or get Con*Tact Caffeine Soap as a reward.  They’re a popular furry business seen in dealer dens. Be an extra-perky patron – or just order direct from Con*Tact.

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Representing furries in 2018: Good news on CNN, Sonicfox, and a tiger on Jeopardy. (Part 1)

December 12, 2018, 6:00 am
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In 2018, fandom had so much going on that this needs two parts. Part 1 has the media, and Part 2 is for conventions, charity, art, celebrities, awards, spending, and more. 

Pic: Cecil Shepherd (center) with Mr. Disko and Patch

Ever been on an aircraft carrier? The USS Hornet, in Alameda CA, is docked across the bay from San Francisco. It’s a fearsome wedge of rust-flecked metal bigger than most city blocks, and bristling with guns, planes and artifacts from WWII to the Apollo Space Program. Now it’s a national historic landmark and museum, but if you walk down the cavernous hangar deck and look at photos of Pearl Harbor in flames, it almost tingles with the smells and sounds of a global struggle against the evil of fascism. It made me think of my grandpa in the South Pacific, taking islands from Japan. It could make the world’s biggest hippie feel a sense of pride and humbleness from the history there.

Look ahead a few months, when this ship will be full of furry animals throwing a rave. That’s the cutting edge of turning swords into plowshares!

The second Space Camp Party is coming. On 12/9/18 it started with a photoshoot on the ship that drew a whopping 130 fursuiters just for a pre-planning meet. Previously in March 2018, over 500 went to the first party at Faction Brewing (a converted aircraft hanger on the same navy base). From early demand, the followup is likely to reach the size of a single-day con.

While I was doing silly poses in my rat suit against a giant ship anchor (does Bad Dragon make one of those?) – I thought of furries taking over the ship and conquering the nation. Next, the world. Then the blue skies above, and then the moon.

2018 is an intense year with many furry news stories topping ones that just happened. It’s too much to easily keep up with, and Fred Patten’s death affects publishing here, but on the plus side, I’m now paying for articles. Get in touch about submitting your story. And check out how much cool furry stuff there is to share.

Love from the media.

 

CNN’s This Is Life with Lisa Ling – Season 5 finale Furry Nation.  Was this show a mea culpa for mockery by “The Media?” In the popular furry imagination, that’s a melty brown blob made of everything from supermarket tabloids to PBS.

It’s a fandom faith that the media is eeeevil because 23547 years ago, Vanity Fair/MTV/CSI made it a punching-bag for ratings. But in my opinion, even the 2003 CSI episode “Fur and Loathing” isn’t totally fair to hate. (It’s not documentary, and a fiction story about murder made with real furries is an absurd party watch.) That’s part of my usual disagreement with media illiteracy, while I watched things warm up for years in places like high quality features in Vice. CSI was syndicated, causing persistent annoyance simply by reach. 15 years later, CNN reached a half million viewers with their sympathetic perspective on fandom.

Furry Nation was made against resistance about “The Media” being welcomed at Anthro Northwest 2017 (a sort of carefully-managed replacement to fill the smoking crater left by Rainfurrest.)  Remember that? Lisa Ling personally engaged with fake rumors hurled at her show during production.

Given how much yelling there was about the con and the media, it’s a miracle they got good stuff at all. When I hear that the show overlooked minority or LGBT fans, I would say it’s hard to be choosy with backlash – raise your hand if you want to be counted. Also, while it’s reasonable to want representation, it’s a story of individual fans, not a comprehensive review.

Others complained that it portrayed broken people reaching for a fix, like for anxiety. Sure, fandom is fine, but a story needs stakes to pull you in, and the thing about anxiety is every human has it (try being on camera.) I’d just call it a humanizing correction for yiffer-fever stereotypes.

Dominique “Sonicfox” McLean at The Game Awards in Los Angeles. On 12/6/18 , the world’s highest-paid professional fighting game player put on his fursuit by Fursuit Enterprise, and took the stage to accept the year’s Best Esports Player award. He dominates a game more smoothly than he handles a mike, but he still owned the room. “I’m gay, black, a furry – pretty much everything a Republican hates – and the best Esports player of the year!”

That wasn’t campaigning to try getting an award, it was looking back on how he did it. And nobody can deny it was skill. But there’s more. When a queer black gamer can’t expect peace from haters, telling the truth isn’t political and identity-blindness is the lie. You can point at the actual record of Republicans, or the Gamergate hate movement that embraced alt-right scammers like Milo Yiannopoulos, who collaborated with white supremacists at Breitbart before it fizzled out and he went bankrupt. That’s context for the way Sonicfox gave a “we’re here, get used to it” message that cut through nice corporate PR, or pretension that gaming is separate from the world. You could call it raising his hand to be counted, like many furries wanted from CNN.

On Twitter, he followed up: “Others keep thinking my personality is being gay and black and if that’s the case, you’ve missed the point already.”

The point is personal power to shake the status quo. At age 20, SonicFox can pay for his Computer Science college study many times over, and I can’t even buy him a beer yet. On Twitter, his follows shot from 59K to 142K in just months since I interviewed him in May 2018. That makes him the most followed, officially Twitter Verified furry (including Uncle Kage, Kyell Gold, Fox Amoore and Joaquin Baldwin). I don’t think he’s even trying for power. He wins by loving what he does, with sweet sincerity for everyone who does too. That’s a fan’s fan like every furry.

In our interview, Sonicfox told me: “I am not afraid to stomp out some racist alt-furry shithead in my feed”. Harassers can’t stop him from looking out for himself and furries around him like that, any more than they can take down his speech with hateful brigading on Youtube. It’s like the way negative media couldn’t stop the fandom from growing.

For 2018, Sonicfox shows that this fandom isn’t a doormat any more.

Bucktown Tiger on Jeopardy. I don’t think this featured furry openly (and I didn’t get to covering it), but this was a big deal inside a fandom who knew. In 7 days on the show, he took in $163,721, with a tiger-claw move after his wins.

Look for Part 2 soon: Midwest Furfest, Dogbomb, Jello Biafra and Violent J, fursuit auction records, awards, and more. Like the article? It takes a lot of effort to share these, so please support Dogpatch Press on Patreon to help make it possible.

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Josh Acosta Sentenced for life in Fullerton Murder

January 4, 2019, 7:00 am
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Rune’s Furry Blog showcases “people within the Furry Community… their characters, life, thoughts, and beliefs”. It also covers furry issues and media plus some personal blogging. Rune joins other guest posters to Dogpatch Press like Tempe O’Kun and Arrkay (Culturally F’d). Welcome Rune. – Patch

Acosta sentenced to life for triple homicide

Frank Felix (left) – Josh Acosta (right)

On September 24th, 2016, media outlets blew up with the news of a triple homicide in Southern California. Now known as the “Fullerton triple homicide”, the highlight of the headlines following the incident was that there had been a murder among “Furries”. Despite the hate and jokes that circulated due to misleading titles and information, the fandom itself was broken over this loss.

The victims were Christopher Yost (34), Jennifer Yost (39), and their friend Arthur Boucher (28). The loss ran deep as those involved were very active in the Furry community. They were known through several local groups, including the La Habra Fur Bowling social group, and as attendees at the Prancing Skiltaire monthly parties (the long running furry house owned by some of the founders of 1980’s fandom.)

For the local Furry populace, Jennifer Yost was seen as the “Mom of the community,” thus her nickname of Jen-ma. She was known for her kindness in listening and helping others with their problems, and her crafting… making clothes and stuffed animals for her children. It was her youngest child (then 6-years-old) who called the police to tell them that their parents were dead that morning.

It was 8:21 AM when dispatchers received the 911 call from the girl saying that her parents were dead. By 8:26 AM, police were on the scene where the bodies were found. The victims were slain by gunshots. There were two children still inside the home, the caller (aged 6) and another child (aged 9 at the time)- but there was also a 17-year-old daughter who was nowhere to be found. At first she was labeled as a “missing/at risk” person.  But then she became a suspect in the case.

The next day at 8:45 AM, police made two arrests in connection with the case: Josh Acosta (an Army Private stationed at Fort Irwin), and Frank Felix, of the Sun Valley Furry Fandom. The missing girl was also taken into custody, but as she was a juvenile at the time, no information on this was disclosed because information pertaining to a minor is against the law. Felix and Acosta were being held in jail with their bails set at 1-million dollars.

By September 27th, Felix and Acosta were charged with 3 counts of murder. There were no charges being discussed for the 17-year-old still in custody. It was later revealed that she received immunity based on her testimony in the case.

There was an initial arraignment hearing on October 28th of 2016. Both men requested an alternate arraignment date, which was granted for January 2017. On January 13th, both men pled “not guilty” in the murders. The pre-hearing for their trials began on March 24th. The jury trial for Acosta began on October 22nd, 2018 and on November 8th Acosta was found guilty.

Charged with 3 counts of first-degree murder, 3 counts of special circumstances (due to it being multiple victims), and 3 counts of discharging a firearm causing injury/death, Acosta was sentenced (on December 14th) to 3 consecutive life sentences with no possibility of parole, plus 75-years additional to life because of the special circumstances.

As the case was happening, the media was rather silent about it. There were few details to be found, including a motive (if any) for this crime. Rumors quickly circulated that it was a Furry Hate Crime, before evidence popped up showing otherwise.

While the police were still working to figure out what had happened, it was found that the eldest daughter (who was now in custody) had a forbidden relationship with Frank Felix, whom she was forbidden to see. Now it seemed more likely a crime of passion – and again, media outlets turned towards the fact that Katlynn Goodwill Yost was also a Furry, who suited with her Mother in order to escape reality. Katlynn was depicted as nearly ‘inhuman’ in various articles saying that she had trouble connecting with people. Even without any evidence to back it up, articles had the blood painted on her hands. They showed photographs of her holding a knife up to a teddy-bear, extreme makeup, and anything to make it seem like it was two young (and mentally disturbed) people trying to get away with some forbidden relationship, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.

Katlynn was later released from juvenile detention without being held culpable for the actual murder. Now in 2018, we have the entire story of what happened on the night when the three victims were killed. Private Joshua Acosta was stationed at Fort Irwin (at the time), and met Katlynn through the Furry Fandom. Through their friendship and time talking, Katlynn told Acosta in confidence that she was being sexually abused by her step-father. Katlynn stated this had been happening on a weekly basis from the ages of seven to fifteen.

Accordingly, if those allegations are true, then these murders were not the crime of passion people had expected with Katlynn being banned from a relationship with Frank Felix. Rather, Katlynn testified against Felix, saying that he had “blackmailed” her into having sexual intercourse with him or else he would tell Katlynn’s mother about the molestation going on. However, Frank Felix was in the home on the night that the three victims were murdered. Katlynn let Felix and Acosta inside her home. Their plan was merely to tell Jennifer Yost about the molestation, and then get Katlynn as far away from the house as possible.

Katlynn and Felix had gone to Acosta’s truck when the soldier entered the residence. Acosta then used a shotgun to shoot Jennifer Yost between the eyes, shot Boucher in the head (later explaining it as mere “collateral damage”), and then shot Christopher Yost as he was trying to flee the residence. The other children in the house (then ages 9-and-6) were unharmed. Then Acosta returned to his vehicle and the three of them drove away, with Katlynn unaware that her parents were dead. This was backed up by Acosta, as he verified that she did not know his intentions of killing the parents.

Suspicions arose that this had been Acosta’s plan from the beginning, and not a last-minute decision, because on September 19th, Frank Felix sent a message to a friend saying that he was stressed and might be assisting someone in a murder. However, Felix stated that this was in reference to killing an animal. Felix has since been linked to getting Acosta the shotgun used in the murders, driving Acosta’s truck to the home, and then helping to destroy evidence. Felix’s pre-hearing is set for February 1st of 2019.

Acosta referred to the Yost family as a “festering wound” that he had “cauterized.”

Acosta’s attorney noted that the young man was autistic, and this made him: “overly trusting and naive, which led to him wanting to ‘save’ Katlynn Goodwill.” Goodwill was accused by the attorney as being manipulative, and that she had very much wanted her parents dead. Writings found under multiple personas conflicted with what Goodwill said to the police… things such as friction with her Mother and wanting to kill someone. Katlynn admitted to lying to police at first, and it is still unclear whether or not these things stand true. But it was deemed that whether Katlynn had manipulated Acosta or not, he was still the one responsible for carrying out the murders, and thus he was charged.

Again, this was something that the media had decided to highlight in their view; that an autistic soldier had murdered a “Furry” family, who were part of a very sexualized community meant for dressing as anthropomorphic animals.

Naturally this spurred even more conversation about how someone like Acosta got into the Army in the first place (with his non-neurotypical status).

“In the US & UK a formal diagnosis of autism is a disqualifying condition. Though there are instances in the US where a waiver has been issued during the recruitment process or the recruiter did not include it [on the paperwork at all]”

—Len Blakely, Senior NCO (Canadian Armed Forces).

Not much is known of Acosta, other than he was seen as very immature. Known more for his involvement with the Brony community, he was often seen taking a pony character with him to his combat exercises.

The young children who were left in the home have since received counseling and were relocated to live with their relatives. Boucher’s family may still be mourning for their relative who lost his life because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. At the time of his death, Boucher had a 3-year-old daughter. A GoFundMe was set up in the Yost’s name for funeral expenses and family care, back in 2016… and at least we can rest assured that the murderers are being put behind bars. But the damage has long-since been done.

It remains to be seen what will be the final verdict for Felix.

– Rune AngelDragon

Sources:

1. http://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Fullerton_triple_homicide

2. https://popularmilitary.com/autistic-army-private-sentenced-for-killing-furry-community-parents-who-molested-their-child/?fbclid=IwAR3r6-ZLliQvfZvZHodFIHkI3r5gvqbDfhg7K8CUVrTLRmG2vOKfNL1UAmg

3. https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/11/09/jury-army-mechanic-guilty-of-first-degree-murder-in-2016-fullerton-triple-killing-case-had-ties-to-furry-community/

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