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Illustration from The Evolution Card Game on Kickstarter

A bit slow in crowdfundingland, so I’m going to take a quiet moment out and look at a couple of cute tee shirt companies currently funding. But it’s worth pointing out one little, or large, achievement. If you’re a fan of the adorable steampunky webcomic “Lackadaisy,” you’re probably aware of this one already.

It’s hard to find enough words to praise this comic. The art is detailed, with the attention to detail of any of the great realistic artists of the fandom and the character and warmth of…of…well, like I said, words fail me.

So it’s newsworthy that Lackadaisy’s artist, Tracy Butler, has managed to quit her job, gather her fanbase together, and take the plunge into full-time, crowdfunded cartooning. A scary step, but it seems to have worked for her–through Patreon, she’s actually looking at a living wage, and without a lot of complicated perks. Congratulations, Tracy!

Now, on to the tees.

I seem to be a little bit late to the party for Wild @ Heart’s tee line, now on Kickstarter. I missed the original project post back in March, and now there’s only a week left on the project. Oops!

The concept, and the tees, are pretty simple, but well-executed–it’s a tail tee. The first two designs to be unfurled are the fox and husky, to be released for the next Anthrocon. Also in the line-up is a super-cute dragon with wikkle wings, a tiger, and—well, I don’t know what that is. It looks like a strawberry bunny, I’m at a loss.

If you happen to miss this cute Kickstarter, you can check out Studio Cute’s webpage, follow Ponygirl on FA, and the tees are likely to make it to her Etsy page as well (along with some cute wolf-themed jewelry…), so even if it’s too late to pony up some cash, you can still get some tail there.

Apologies for that last one. It’s really been a heck of a week.

Over on Indiegogo, you still have a month to check out Animaltshirts.eu–though there’s a lot to be said for just cruising over to their website. To save you some valuable clicking time, here’s the species page for canine designs.

Points for having a lot of obscure animals–Tasmanian devils, hyenas, bats, Sergals (!), dragons all make the cut–as well as a heaping helping of fox subspecies, some tribal style art–lots of variety in this company!

Most of the art is by RaikaDeLaNoche (or if you’re not at work, you could check her after-dark alterego, AlmaAurora), whose style runs an impressive stylistic range from pieces reminiscent of Blotch, Goldenwolf, and Michele Light. Nice stuff!

Ultimately, this is a capital campaign, intended to get a textile printer and replace some of the services their previous provider cut. The prices in the Indiegogo page are a little higher than in the shop–it’s a fundraiser more than a deal of the century. So think a bit about how you want your money to flow.

For a “complete” list of furry/fur-friendly crowdfunding projects, check out the Project Page! New Projects Art

Tea Critters 2016 Calendar (Ends: 5/2/2015)
Illustrated calendar by NightLineZ with delicately colored animals from the Chinese zodiac, in watercolor and tea.

Clothing/Jewelry

Wild @ Heart (Ends: 4/18/2015)
Animal-themed tees with little tail butt-logos, choose your species! The dragon one is particularly cute.

Comics/Graphic Novels

Batbear (Ends: 5/8/2015)
In a city ruled by darkness, one bear is brave enough to don the MASK OF JUSTICE. Batbear.
Although I did like the original title, Deadpooh.

Dream Town Amusement Park (Ends: 5/10/2015)
The happiest place on earth goes to hell and the animal mascots start attacking. Art by Defected Angel.
For a Five Nights at Freddy’s rip-off, this graphic novel has much better art than it needed to.

Lackadaisy on Patreon (Patreon ongoing funding)
A Patreon campaign for the luscious steampunk comic, Lackadaisy, by Tracy Butler.
Awesome! A wonderful artist successfully quits her dayjob to commit art!

Film/Animation/Theater

Slow and Steady (Ends: 5/6/2015)
CGI adaptation of the Tortoise and the Hare. The Uncanny Valley on this one is quite high.

Lapin, Une Etrange Historie d’Amour (Ends: 5/7/2015)
A surreal french film about a man, a rabbit-like girl, a strange world under an apartment. A bit Gaimanesque. A bit French.

Tabletop Games

Burrows and Badgers (Ends: 4/22/2015)
Animal tabletop mini figures with a Redwall aesthetic, but a little dark-and-grimmer than you might expect.

Epyllion, Dragon Epic RPG (Ends: 5/3/2015)
Tabletop RPG of noble dragon houses and their scions rebelling against tradition.
Interestingly, the team lists MLP: Friendship is Magic as an influence, huh. This is actually past goal pretty early in, which is kind of a surprise–also they may have lowballed the goal.

The Evolution Game System (Ends: 5/24/2015)
A colorful card game of evolution, predator and prey, and terrible fights around the watering hole. Also, lots of striped hyenas.
Past goal!

Toys

Embroidered Equines (Ends: 5/3/2015)
Plush ponies from SparkCostumes, and a maker looking to move to embroidery from the stitched applique model.

Video Games

Ninja Chronicle (Ends: 5/3/2015)
A collect-a-thon adventure featuring a skyship and a nimble cat and fox.
Slow start. I think this might suffer from first-project-itis and a realistic goal.

Adult

Big Book of BNG (Ends: 5/2/2015)
92 pages of muscly, glossy, color guys by BNG

…Causes

DragonHarpGaming mascot suit (Ends: 6/7/2015): I’m broadly against “fund my fursuit” pages, but this is for a cause of a sort, a charity/gaming group and it’s a cute character, a dragon with video game controller markngs, so hey.

…Just for fun

The Art of Character Design (Ends: 5/9/2015): Vol.2 of a book of game, film, and toy character design. CGI, puppets, stop-motion. Fun coffee-table tour of the subject.

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We've got a very kind person on this sub asking what furries do in their non-furry lives. And lets face it, I'm very curious about some of you as well.

Post us a quick comment about what your non furry self is!

I know mines pretty simple, 9 to 6 data entry job, live in an apartment with my boyfriend and we play video games and dungeons and dragons. Graduated college so no more school for me. But I went to school for art, so I draw a lot (big fat surprise huh).

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Let first start off and say that I am not a furry but I also have no issue with it…Im not trying to convince him out of it or anything like that.

The problem is that he is emotionally very immature and has a very unhealthy view of it (He is 16,aspergers, meds, therapist - the whole 9)…not the actual furry thing but his approach to it. He had talked about him being a furry for quite some time now and me and his mom took him to a convention. Three days and he had a blast. Very positive experience, we had fun…he bought a tail and some mercy and was happy. I said I had no issue with the stuff and whatever. BUT that his involvement in the coming months would be determined on how maturely he handled the coming weeks and balancing stuff.

So first day back from school we got a phone call…he broke down in class and was crying. So I go pick him up…this is sort of a bi-weekly thing for him to just refuse to do work or whatever. Get home and I tell him to put his tail in the closet…that he isn’t mature enough to handle it right now. So he broke down crying. I had to work so went to the office…he was just standing by the closet. I talked to him and basically figured out that he was trying to stay close to the tail…and it seems that he’s latched onto the furry thing and think life can be like a convention all the time. He isn’t figuring our that everyone has work, career, school, personal lives, responsibilities and all that. I tried to explain to him that everyone has something that they love…that we get through the stuff we hate like work and school so we get rewarded so we can do what we love. He’s got it in his head that there can be this way to live where you’re in suits all the time and it’s all fun and games and don’t have to worry about the other stuff.

I don’t know how to approach this…I am very careful to not talk negatively about being a furry but his approach to it is really affecting the family and his own emotional well being. And he’s done it before with things like Wicca or wanting to just live in the woods and live the hunter gatherer life…he seems to latch onto something and then put it in this super romantic view where all the responsibilities of life don’t exist…..this time it just so happens to be furry.

So what sort of lives do most of you live….what’s the balance like of real life and the furry life. Did you go to school, have a career and all that. I guess I’m looking for sort of ways to show him that being a furry is just part of your life…it isn’t EVERYTHING about you. People have kids, and shopping and bills and all this other stuff…it’s just not suits and games and fan fiction or whatever….

Also sorry if I misspoke about anything furry….I dunno the lingo / whatever.

EDIT ADD: Wanted to thank everyone for the replies...I have been trying to reply to each one because you took the time out to answer my questions / give insight so I think I should reply and thank you and all that. I've gotta work but I'll get back to it....I think it also might be helpful later to have him post and get some insight. <3

EDIT #2: Wow....I was expecting a couple of responses and then nothing else...it's been like hours and theyre still coming in! Really awesome job everyone...you've almost covered everything I was hoping to...and further strengthened my support of the culture because how insightful, positive and forthcoming you all have been with this. Ill try to reply to the others tomorrow maybe...we had, to say the least a very emotional day and I had to finish up some work tonight so I'm freakin' beat. Off to read comics. Much love everyone.

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This article is about the blurring of lines between human and non-human animals. It looks at how the furry identity muddies the idea of what it means to be a person by challenging the human/animal duality, and draws parallels with similar false dualities such as male/female, straight/gay, and animal/machine. This is all tied into science fiction, futurism, and feminism.

I realise this is an odd opening to my article. However I think this opening is necessary for those of you who saw the word “cyborg”, and guessed that I’d be writing about Randomwolf as a robot who learns that the most powerful force on earth is love. If you were hoping to read about the activation of Randomwolf’s emotion chip, you may stop reading now. This article is about how furry links with cyborg philosophy. Robot Randomwolf never learns anything about these things we humans call “feelings”.

The Cyborg Manifesto, an essay written by Donna Haraway first published in 1985 (full text here*), is a thoroughly readable and prescient exercise in futurism and feminist theory. Haraway posits that technology will strongly influence the way we perceive identity, and that this will have a knock-on effect to the world in general. And while Haraway doesn’t predict the rise of the furry community, furries fit neatly into her predictions.

* Note that my link to the full text is pretty obviously a scan. There are a few OCR errors.

Haraway’s essay is a manifesto. It is not a review of the current state of affairs, it’s a look into the future with hope. Her cyborg future is all a bit Star Trek, with technology removing old prejudices that define gender roles, sexuality, and the differences between humans, animals and machines.

Her thoughts on human relationships with non-human animals and machines have materialized, in part, with the expression of furry identity. Haraway doesn’t worry too much about the difference between reality and fiction, persuasively arguing that fictional extensions of real-world phenomena affect the way we think. She argues that science fiction informs science fact, something we can all see in much of today’s gadgetry, reflecting as it does the hypotheticals of 20th century science fiction.

As an example, Haraway compares an organism to a “biotic component”. If you accept that these two things are strongly related, the fact that one is natural and the other synthetic becomes moot. There is no fundamental difference, in terms of function, between a human ear and one augmented with a hearing aid.

This ties in with furry, because an animal-person identity subverts the existence of a hard boundary between human animals and non-human animals. Most of us have an animal-person identity of some sort, which may fit anywhere on the spectrum as a lightly modified fictional version of our human selves, through to the therians: those who feel they are, on some level, not completely or not solely human.

The muddying of these waters affects the way we relate to non-human animals. For starters, many furs feel a close affinity for their animal counterparts, treating them with a degree of anthropomorphization. That might be as simple as enjoying some cute pictures (e.g. cheelaxing), thinking of them as a special case (for example when it comes to food; many horse furs have very strong opinions about the consumption of horse meat), or by giving a pet the status of family member.

You can see my own furry sensibilities come to the fore by the language I use. I am careful to call humans “human animals” and non-humans “non-human animals”. My language shows that I don’t give human beings any special or divine status, that I believe in the science of evolution rather than the fabulism of creation, and that I think that non-human animals must be considered to have some rights.

Consider this thought experiment: imagine that you become your furry character, and that the rest of the world stays as-is. Would you expect to be given the same rights as you enjoy now? Of course. Now imagine a genetically-engineered human/non-human hybrid of considerable intelligence – let’s say a dolphin anthro with below-average human intelligence, but with intelligence at the lower end of “normal”. Should our dolphin-man enjoy the same rights as humans? The answer here, again, has to be yes.

You can see where I am going. Do we give human rights to intelligent primates? If we don’t apply any divine uniqueness to human animals, we can’t reasonably deny rights to comparable non-human animals, and indeed the Great Apes are given special protections in some parts of the world, notably New Zealand.

And so on, we can step down a rough hierarchy of animals, asking what rights should be given to each. Should pigs be granted the right not to be raised for slaughter? Should mice be granted the right not to be poisoned?

From this perspective, where we accept that humans are just another animal, one with greater cognitive and physical capacity, it’s easy to conclude that the two extreme points of view are absurd. On one hand, we should not be granting full human rights to minor animals like mice. On the other, we must grant some rights to non-human animals depending on circumstance and cognitive ability (among other considerations).

My use of language—”human animal” and “non-human animal”—has this political position as an inherent message. I don’t think that humans have special non-animal status, and so I’m undermining the creationist duality of human/animal.

This is Haraway’s cyborg manifesto in action. By finding examples, real or fantastical, where humans are also partly non-human animal, or machine, we’re forced to consider how non-human animals or machines might be treated as humans. As Haraway says, this leads to “kinship with animals and machines”, which will affect society in general.

It’s ironic that our status as the highest animals—and therefore able to make these complex connections in thought and in language—may challenge the way we treat lesser animals. As Haraway says:

“Perhaps, ironically, we can learn from our fusions with animals and machines how not to be Man.”

 

The above sentence takes on a wider meaning if you read it from a furry perspective.

Technology, of course, is not necessarily a force for good. Haraway’s manifesto is a call for action. Her action, in this case, is to ensure that technology is used as a tool for diversity, rather than a tool to consolidate the monolithic status quo. Recent arguments about net neutrality are an example of this, with neutrality necessary to minimize the control of technology by corporations and governments.

In general, Haraway argues that technology is a fundamentally progressive force, and therefore there is good reason to hope for positive change. However those hopes don’t always become reality, as—sadly—illustrated by one of Haraway’s examples (when she wrote the manifesto in 1985).

Haraway looked at the lack of women working in world-building commercial or industrial roles, and considered this an example of male/female duality, where (by default) men go to work and women stay at home. She saw hope in the “ethnic and racial diversity of women in Silicon Valley”:

“Can these personal preferences and cultural tendencies be welded into progressive politics among this professional middle class in which women, including women of colour, are coming to be fairly numerous?”

 

Haraway’s hope in 1985 seems like folly today.

Haraway also looked to contemporary science fiction to break down the male/female duality. She names a long list of authors, and interestingly names Samuel R. Delany as a “feminist” writer (at least from a cyborg point of view). This surprised me, as Delaney’s work is very male-centric and homosexual, remarkably so for the era in which it was written. Delaney’s dearth of female characters had always struck me as a weakness of his work. Haraway sees it differently, where Delaney’s male households and relationships subvert the very idea of gender roles:

“Cyborgs might consider more seriously the partial, fluid, sometimes aspect of sex and sexual embodiment. Gender might not be global identity after all, even if it has profound historical breadth and depth.”

 

More irony. Haraway sees Delaney’s lack of women—as sexual partners—as an idealized version of the world where women are not required to fulfil traditional roles, in this case (and broadly), male/female as sexual conquerer/conquered respectively. By removing the need for women, Delaney has created a vision of the world where both men and women are free to be themselves outside of the constraints of traditional gender identity.

You can see how the world has changed in this direction since 1985 by looking at the questions on our own 2015 Furry Survey. When you are asked about your gender, there is the usual set of checkboxes. Those people who aren’t able to easily categorize their gender are asked to place it on the Gender Cyborg Identity Diamond*:

* a phrase I just made up but I hope catches on

Sex is important too. Haraway sees these nuances of gender—and nuances of non-human animality (like furries)—as undermining the ubiquity of heterosexuality. Again, technology is the key:

“Sex, sexuality, and reproduction are central actors in high-tech myth systems structuring our imaginations of personal and social possibility.”

 

Haraway happily transgresses the boundary that limits sexual contact to between humans. In this context furries are cyborgs (of human and non-human animals), and the sexual aspects of furry undermine the human/animal duality:

“The cyborg appears in myth precisely where the boundary between human and animal is transgressed. Far from signalling a walling off of people from other living beings, cyborgs signal disturbingly and pleasurably tight coupling. Bestiality has a new status in this cycle of marriage exchange.”

 

Her “myth” in this quote includes not just imagined sexual contact between animal-people in furry pornography, but also cross-species relationships in science fiction (hello Captain Kirk), historical myths involving sexual animal-people such as satyrs, and many more.

The cyborg manifesto, then, challenges those parts of society that are “given”. It’s obvious to a gay person that homosexuals are discriminated against in some circumstances, and similarly obvious to a member of a racial minority or a woman. This hegemony is cultural wallpaper, always there but rarely noticed.

If you’re a member of the privileged majority—roughly white, male, and straight – you might be a bit flummoxed by all these racial equality, feminist, and LGBT rights movements. Yet people were once sure that slavery was justifiable, women shouldn’t vote, and gay men should be jailed. It turned out all those changes made the world a better place. And so it will be when a mostly black city has a mostly black police force, when somewhere around half of silicon valley professionals are women, and when homosexual couples have the universal right to marry.

All unfair prejudice is based on cultural norms, handed down, shadows of our unequal history. Things like:

• Human beings are special.
• Sex is for procreation only.
• Identity expression cannot involve nuances of gender or species (or technology).

The rise of cyborgs—people who mix gender, or species, or animal with technology—make these cultural assumptions ludicrous. It forces us to change our language to include people who exist outside of the old binary duality, and this helps our culture shift towards a world where assumptions aren’t made about gender, race, or sexual behaviour.

The irony of Haraway’s cyborg manifesto is that denying that humans are special makes us more humane. As she asks:

“Why should our bodies end at the skin, or include at best other beings encapsulated by skin?”

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Hiya folks, Its Ringgar again! I am back!

I wanted to say that I am sorry for being gone for so long... I had meant to come back on the sub, but I have hardly had the opportunity as of late. Its been a couple weeks since I was last able to check the front page here. I hope you guys can forgive me for not being here to help and spread happiness and furry love.

What have I missed, fellas? What's new on the sub?

Also, would you folks be interested in another Choose-a-Roleplay thread sometime this week? I'm finally on April Vacation!

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