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submitted by MrSqueaker
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submitted by shorty2430
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Guest post by Khed (@khedhorse). To the furry community, Khed has mainly been an equine amateur artist. But outside the furry community, he’s a grad student who can’t stop analyzing religion and furry things – often at the same time.

In April 1906, at a home at 214 North Bonnie Brae Street, Los Angeles, fire fell from heaven.

This was no fiery column defending fleeing Hebrew slaves nor cause for a modern-day Elijah to slaughter idolatrous priests. To those at the Bonnie Brae home, these were the “cloven tongues of fire” that had visited Christ’s apostles at Pentecost. They were a sure sign of Jesus’s saving power, in latter days come again into the world.

And they were literal tongues, too. Late one night, a black pastor and a white friend were kneeling in prayer when the latter let loose a flow of ecstatic syllables. The next day, the pastor, William Seymour, did the same. And when Seymour acquired a church-turned-warehouse-turned-stable as his new mission center—the famous Azusa Street Mission in downtown LA—hundreds more, of all races, experienced the outpouring of divine power. Those on the margins of society, generally poor, found in this power meaning for their lives, healing from their ills, and salvation for their souls and communities. Missionaries, believing themselves endowed with the power to speak foreign languages spontaneously, set out penniless but joyful to spread the Good Word.

And there was neither black nor white in Christ Jesus to these revivalists. To onlookers in an America in which racial barriers were being erected and fortified, the expressions these early so-called “Pentecostals” took for signs of divine favor were horrific breaches in social protocol. Seymour’s erstwhile mentor, from whom he had learned of the gift of tongues, denounced the “Negroisms” on display under Seymour’s ministry: seemingly nonsensical ululations, jerky dancing motions, raucous exclamations, weeping faces and bodies collapsing, beatifically smiling all the while. Black men were embracing white women, a clear racial transgression for those of the time that was all but overtly sexual: everyone knew black men couldn’t be trusted around virtuous white women. While the Azusa Street Revival under Seymour’s leadership was revolutionary in its deconstruction of strict racial boundaries, it suffered the fate of all revolutions: the disapprobation of those who defined “decorum” as “like us.” Even today, it’s hard to find someone who doesn’t scoff at the so-called Pentecostal gifts of the Spirit, from healings to tongues to handling snakes.

It is these tongues by which Pentecostals came to be identified. In the Biblical account of Pentecost, recorded in Acts 2, the body of the early Christian church is gathered together shortly after Jesus’s Ascension when, in the midst of prayer, the Holy Spirit descends and they begin speaking in tongues. While some in the surrounding crowd heard untutored Jews speaking their foreign languages and, in amazement, converted, others heard merely gibberish and dismissed the Christians as drunks.

In mid-May 2013 I turned on the radio as I pulled out of the Irvine Regional Park. It was tuned in to Radiolab, on which the anchors were interviewing people who had discovered or recovered linguistic ability as adults. They all expressed that a sort of peace, a oneness, a connectedness evaporated with each word they learned or relearned. The need for mediated communication, sequences of arbitrary sounds, reminded them of the irrevocable distance between minds. Language, the constriction of syntax and diction, cut off and enclosed them.

I had been at the park for my first ever furry event, the SoCal FurBQ. Though I’d been lurking in the fandom since 2001 and contributing art since about 2006, I had never had the means to go to an event. Beforehand I was absurdly worried (as I always am when I approach new social spaces) that something would go horrendously wrong: I wouldn’t be able to strike up conversations, it would be just as drama-ridden as the worst online interactions I’d heard about, or events would be overrun by the more sensational parts of the fandom which endlessly capture outsiders’ attention and to which I tend to give a wide berth.

But it was alright. There, I shed my name; I was “Khed” to those I met. I shed my species; I wore my giant toucan beak. I shed my self-censorship; I could use the words “anthro” and “TF” in public without any reservations. I even drew a horse transformation—in the open air, with people around!—and got compliments instead of strange stares. I felt an uncanny sense of openness, of possibility, of potential for new connections.

Language is more than words, though. Though writing is notoriously imperfect (hence the rise of emoticons), even speech has its insufficiencies. A grammar book does not include all we communicate, the structures of discourse that form the riverbeds of knowledge through which we flow. Meaning runs through gesture, through posture, through facial expression, through habits of action and methods of taking up space we are barely coming to understand scientifically. While language and culture do not determine what we can or cannot think, Newspeak-style, they do regulate the channels and categories in which we think. Human, animal, vegetable, mineral; female, male, straight, gay; black, white, Latino, Asian, other; general audience, mature, adult; actual and virtual, digital and traditional, fiction and not.

The furry subculture is based around a single core idea: that the sun-bright line some ancients drew between humans and other beings is permeable. We straddle that limen with great aplomb, building communities and structures within our communitas.

We actually reconfigure our language as well. While only a minority of furs wear fursuits, we should beware of reifying the difference between “real” and “virtual” that we likewise ignore so adeptly. If we collapse the digital and the fleshly worlds into a single plane of analysis, all furries by definition are fursuiters. After all, when someone asks in furspace what species I am, I say I’m a horse. My friends who are less attached to their species often speak of “wearing” one body or another, and in Second Life these headspace images are almost translated into three dimensions.

But there is something about virtual avatar embodiedness that distinguishes it from fleshly embodiedness: there are forms of communication to which we are attuned, if only subconsciously—touch, among others—that can only be approximated through pixels. In online furspace, speaking “furry” is a matter of two dimensions: length and width, word and image. Sometimes other dimensions, sound and time and motion, make appearances, but they’re rarer.

In fleshly furspace, speaking “furry” requires the breaking of human modes of linguistic and extralinguistic discourse. However, furspace in its liminality enables this rupture. If I’m a horse and you’re a wolf, we can employ more unique vocalizations, gestures, and interactions than would be possible were we both human. Wearing a fursuit, a body-mask, facilitates this; being unseen but seeing in public enables varieties of expression.

A charism (plural: charismata) is a gift of the Holy Spirit.

Xenolalia is defined as the supernatural ability to speak in extant foreign tongues. This was the sort displayed at Pentecost proper, bringing on accusations of inebriation – but also conversions.

Glossolalia is defined as the supernatural ability to speak in unknown tongues, especially in prayer or praise. This was not explicitly demonstrated at Pentecost, Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians presupposes it when he admonishes the church to refrain from speaking in tongues unless someone interprets the speaking concurrently. The measure of appropriateness is whether others are edified; for Paul, unintelligible language does not uplift and can be a stumblingblock.

Linguists who have investigated glossolalia have found it, in general, to be strings of phonemes sampled from the speaker’s native language.

Fursonas are perplexing to the outsider. To some things they can relate: sports mascots, cartoons, fables, and special effects makeup are all familiar enough. They have their defined places in our broader culture. But furrydom does not speak these languages, though it has borrowed much of their vocabulary. What was a pidgin cobbled together from various cultural productions has, in its furry re-articulation and intergenerationality, become a creole. Our stopgap, ad hoc business-speak full of vulpine archers, racing lapines, and catpeople on starships has evolved into a native tongue, one with many dialects—some nearly mutually unintelligible—and innumerable redefinitions and neologisms. Our one-time fandom has gone subculture and begun budding subcultures of its own.

And within that subculture, transgressing the human-nonhuman boundary (in whatever way) allows us to transgress other boundaries more easily. Gender, sexuality, and racial performances and tensions are not as intrinsically associated with animals; they are human, even though we can and often to read such performances into animals. Even when the general culture anthropomorphizes or symbolically appropriates animals in certain ways, furry performance can draw from other symbolic dialects, including ones we ourselves have created. My performance as a horse, for instance, contradicts many of the masculine assumptions that have seeped into human-referent but equine verbiage: stud, stallion.

But even though animals are regularly the subjects of common metaphors, the extent of the furry affinity for such metaphors—and perhaps our denial of metaphor—set us apart. This different approach doesn’t always gel well; we speak tongues that others cannot understand or ones they deride. Little children, for example, can easily proclaim that they wish to be a cat or a dog when grown up. It’s a joke they’ll grow out of when they learn about real careers. When an adult dives into the extralinguistic excess of animal-play, however, his or her fellows not only react against the confusion of human and animal, but the rejection of norms of age and maturity. Animals are among the juvenile, domestic things one puts off when we join the sexual, capitalist, individualist, sub/urban world. Admission of a child-identified interest—animals, cartoons, so forth—by an adult—defined by production and sexual capacity—evokes  reactions ranging from disapproval to accusations of perversion. They hear some phonemes they recognize and fill in the gaps with exaggerated stories of minor or major breaches.

From Azusa Street Pentecostalism spread across the world. Very often newspapers, printed in the tens of thousands, brought news of the revival long before missionaries arrived to preach in person. Seymour’s ministry was cut off at the knees when two followers stole his mission’s printing press and subscriber lists. By this point, though, the fire had ignited and could not be extinguished. In the century since Azusa, not only have Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches proliferated, but some mainline Protestant and Catholic churches have taken on “charismatic” practices. At present, some scholars estimate the number of Pentecostals and charismatics in the world to be around 250 million – roughly a quarter of world Christianity. Though Pentecostals come from every socioeconomic stripe, Pentecostalism has flourished in those areas, often poorer, where charismata offer solutions to social, familial, and bodily suffering unavailable otherwise. And in the process it has sometimes served to bridge seemingly intractable fractures in society.

Contrastingly, furrydom has spread mainly through the so-called “developed” nations, leading some to believe that it eases the alienation brought down on First-Worlders by an economic system that splits them up as units of human capital. It can provide identity, ritual, even calendaring to otherwise monotonous lives. I feel it does so by tapping into what Harvey Cox, in his analysis of Pentecostal growth, called “primal speech”: communication that transcends the bounds of human linguistic, social, and bodily categories to release an effusion of pent-up anxieties and bond humans together. Furrydom might also share in a sort of “primal hope” with Pentecostals: the Millennial ideal that someday the world will be better. Whether better means social acceptance of a fetish, deeper and more visceral relationships, a reintegration of nonhuman animals into the sphere of moral consideration, or the Second Coming of Jesus Christ depends on who you ask.

My faith tradition gave up glossolalia years ago in an effort to discard enthusiastic elements that could disrupt ecclesiastical hierarchies and reflect badly on a church struggling after years of social, legal, and economic repression to become respectable. I envy Pentecostals their exuberant worship from time to time, wishing that I would not be constrained to the grammars and words of English in conversations with the divine.

And sometimes I can’t help but wonder if God listens when I practice my whinny.

Like the title says, I'm offering free art. I'm thinking about opening up commissions soon and I'd like to have a few more examples, preferably all with different subjects. After all, it does get a bit boring drawing my own characters over and over again.

Here's my most recent drawing, completed a few days ago, so you can see what my art looks like: http://i.imgur.com/KVjnUfE.png

All you have to do is post a link to your fursona and whatever else you'd like included in the drawing. Depending on my mood, the free art can vary from a sketch to a full digital painting.

Also, if you would be so kind, maybe give suggestions on how I should price my art? I'm a little clueless right now.

Thanks! I look forward to drawing your fursonas! :)

Edit: For those who are interested, my FurAffinity account is LadyKleur (Link for the lazy here: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/ladykleur/). It's basically all super old stuff, but hey. Shows improvement.

submitted by LadyKleur
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Started uploading what little artwork I've done to FurAffinity, and I thought I'd share the best one as a first Reddit post. Hope you like it

submitted by ShutterFox
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submitted by uzzeee
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This week we talk about beta readers and their usefulness. As well, we read our very own Christmas stories on-air!

 

Fangs and Fonts

Click below to Listen http://www.fangsandfonts.com/FnF/Episodes/Ep12_-_Beta_Got_Back.mp3

Download here | Open Player in New Window

Stay tuned.

Ep 12 – Beta Got Back - This week we talk about beta readers and their usefulness. As well, we read our very own Christmas stories on-air!   Stay tuned.

Hello again. 

Short time, eh?

The reason I write back so fast is that I need to express something with words before I get a chance to do it with actions.

(This will be garbled, but I hope you can make sense of it. Because I can't.)

Since I was 4 years old, I have been bullied and abused by almost everyone, kids, even the staff at my daycare when I was of that age, and I feel it has left a significant psychological scar inside me. It quite literally drives me mad.

Sometimes, this can lead to feelings of a suicidal nature. You see, I suffer from serious mood swings, ones that last for hours and hours at a time and are triggered by the smallest of problems. I'm talking getting told off by someone for a minor thing, like forgetting something I was supposed to bring home from school. They are simple things, things I should be able to do, but when I cant and I make a mistake, it feels like I've failed as a human being. When my mother does have a go at me for these things, which she had a right to, I have a fear of defending my corner, I feel that no matter what is wrong, there is no excuse and I should never have made a mistake. I'm just a useless fucking human. I don't know if I became bi-polar or something as a result of my earlier abuse but I think it had a good deal to do with it. At the lowest, I become self-destructive, fantasizing about the destruction of myself and others. I feel like I am useless and worthless, like I won't even contribute to society or be worth of the time and money people put into my existence. These feelings can be brought on by myself. I have found a long time ago I could drive myself into a weird form of madness, which I ceased to do again, however I know it is possible.

I also think there is another reason that contributes to this. I lost my faith in religion at a very young age after being shouted at by the vicar's assistant for daring to shake her hand during one of the ceremonies my church did (British church services are ruthlessly strict). It is for this reason that I don't want to seek Religion for help, I have the power of life and death in my hands (at least that of myself), where is the Bible going to work in that? 

I do have something though which I can call a "religion". It goes by the idea of three idols of mine, hero's to those who don't wish to use biblical terms. It has "White Fang" from the Jack London novel as the kind of main... god... person, who attempts to use a combination of karma and fate to help, but I know he cant help everything. The second one of these is "Wile E Coyote" who I idolize for his resilience, something I dearly need regularly in life. The last of these is "Tech E Coyote". He has a more... sexual role, which I will not go into as it makes little difference. 

Your thinking "That's just stupid!"

That's because it is. My mind is dumb enough to believe it, so I simply re-cycle it in my head and it retains some sanity. So when it comes to death and the afterlife, I go by the idea that when you die, you are allowed to be in a realm with your mind, like being put inside your subconscious, isolated from the rest of the world, me inside my tortured mind. What this means is, death is at the worst, an inconvenience. I love being alone, I am practically a lone wolf in nature (I've never felt loneliness as an emotion) and being locked in my mind where I don't have to worry about abuse or the knowledge that no matter how hard I try, I won't be able to get to a point in life where I am at peace.

I find that I don't fit in with society at all. I'm attracted to the wrong gender, I don't like the right things, I dress stupidly, I don't conform with what is modern and fashionable... the list goes on. Where the fuck am I supposed to find a fellow furry metal head who is gay and doesn't mind being in love with a guy who's lost his mind? And as for friends, I only have about three and I have to lie blatantly to them every day I live. And I know they will just let me die when I tell them who I really am. I don't have "true" friends. The only ones I have are furries and they are all out of the country.

When I write this, I feel stupid, like I am writing some foolish fantasy. But I know that in the heat of the moment, I'll believe it. It feels stupid as I have a decent chance of getting a good job in a garage, a job that will pay me well. But garages do not suit homosexual's like me at all, they are one of the most homophobic trades around, unless being in the Westboro Baptist Church is a profession...

I know that I should tell my family. But I know one of two things will happen. Either they will think its just standard depression and it'll fade off, stop scaring them, or that they will go apeshit and ask why I didn't tell them about it before. The problem with this is, I fear that I won't be able to produce enough evidence to support such a thing that they will believe. Also, its not like they can do anything about it. I'm fighting human nature, an unstoppable force. And I am no immovable object

What should I do? Is there anything I can do? Or is this just an imminent road to death?

Thank you!

Fred E Coyote (age 16)

* * *

Dear Fred,

Hello again. You’ve written to me now on several occasions, including about your sexual obsession with Tech E. Coyote, your struggles with homosexual feelings, and your problems with bullying and feeling useless. I had thought I had helped you somewhat, based on your testimonials saying you were over your Tech E obsession and so on. I’m sorry that is apparently not true.

As you know, I am not a trained therapist. Given all that you are going through, I really would suggest you seek out some professional counseling, if it is at all possible.

All that aside, I will try to offer some words of comfort to you.

What is core to your problem is that you are basing what is “right” and “wrong” on the opinions of those external to you: the people at church, at school, your peers, and so on. Because those people’s worldviews do not match your own, you believe you are insane or simply not right in the head. This idea is deeply imbedded in you because you have had these opinions and views forced down your throat since you were a toddler. That is the time when your brain is still being wired, so to speak, so now they are deeply ingrained in you and hard to shake.

You need to unlearn what you have learned. You need to realize that your ideas and beliefs have validity and just because a lot—or even a majority—of people may not believe as you do does not make you wrong. Remember, it used to be commonly believed that the Sun orbited the Earth, that illnesses were caused by demonic possession, and tomatoes were poisonous to eat, just to name a few things. People are often wrong.

Most people would disagree with the things I believe in, too. But I don’t care. I have come to my own conclusions on life and they are mine and they are what I believe and they guide me in life.

I would like to recommend someone to you: Don Miguel Ruiz. He has compiled and explained the belief systems of ancient peoples in books like The Four Agreements. Visit his website at http://www.miguelruiz.com/ (and, no, I don’t get a commission on sales :-P)

You would benefit greatly from reading his books and/or listening to his tapes. They are all about unlearning all the shit that society has filled your head with so that you can connect to yourself and the real world.

Hope this helps you more than my previous letters.

Bear hugs,

Papabear

submitted by SkyF0x
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submitted by LadyCybercat
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So, since "joining" the fandom some 7-8 years ago, I've recently noticed that foxes, huskies, wolves, lions, tigers, squirrels, wombats and red pandas are all on a decline (in as much as that's thinkable), giving way to all manner of strange hybrids. Most "new" furries I run into these days are some kinda wolf/dragon/squid/mosquito hybrid, who is also a vampire, has bioluminescent fur, and whose farts smell like strawberries.

Why is this? I'm genuinely curious as to why the furry fandom seems to have gotten so bored with real animal species, in all the majestic beauty, and feels the need to make all sorts of thinkable and unthinkable blends, in an effort to be more unique.

[EDIT:] I just want to point out that I'm not baw-haw'ing and saying people shouldn't hybridize their fursonas. By all means. I've just noticed what seems to be an increase, and am naturally curious about it. Personally, I prefer "natural" furries. Non-hybrids, in natural colours, with realistic patterns, that just happen to be anthropomorphic. I feel hybrids work best within the same familae, i.e. tiger-lion, wolf-fox, and such. But that's just - like - my opinion, man..

submitted by Thohi
[link] [90 comments]

In addition to drawing commissions I wanted to sell various crafts when I got the funds. By a stroke of luck I was given some cash yesterday and I plan on buying some yarn. I'll only have enough for one tail though. So if you do want one, think up some colors [three max.] and dimensions.

Also consider that

• you have to be comfortable giving me your address so I can mail it to you

• the bigger the tail, the longer it will take

• complicated patterns might not be achieved; I'm still fairly new to this craft and the only patterns I've done were stripes

I'm not sure when I'll have enough money to make a second tail but if all goes well with the first one it'll hopefully be soon after. Also remember, my commissions are only a dollar. If you know someone who wants art of their fursona or want one yourself, just PM me the details.

As far as pricing for the yarn tails, that's up to you. The base price will be however much the supplies cost+shipping to you from NY. I'm not sure about sending things internationally yet so please, US residents for the time being.

Now comes the main question: What would you pay for a yarn tail?

I ask because I've never sold one and would like to know how much you guys think is appropriate charge. Each bundle of yarn at my local craft store cost's about $4 after tax. After the base price I add the shipping which if I remember correctly can be calculated from the UPS website. Here's were it get's tricky. I can't make the tail and THEN decide how much it's worth. If the customer can't afford it then I wasted everyone's time. So to avoid potential disaster I need to know how much you think the design you're after is worth, keeping in mind the complexity of the pattern, the amount of yarn needed, and how much time it will take to make.

The only example I can make for dimensions is as follows:

Approx. 1' long tail, skinny

• 2/3 of one yarn bundle
• 12 hours to make

So finally, PM me your design and dimensions for the tail and how much you would pay for it. Sorry for the hella long post.

Here's a kitten to make up for it.

submitted by LadyJames
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submitted by KrytheonRenzorii
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submitted by Greypuppy
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Sooo I'm going to further confusion this weekend. I don't know many furries online sadly. If anyone sees me there please come say hi! I won't bite much :3

I'll be wearing a fabulous rainbow jacket.... And I'm the short nerdy blonde girl.

I'm straight and FABULOOOUUUSSS !! Thought it was an appropriate time for my jacket.

Btw, did anyone know hempcon is right before furcon at the same place? So weird..:3

submitted by FizzyFoxy
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submitted by shiftyeyedsam
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Would you rather live in a Furry world as a Human?

or

Live in the Human world as a Furry?

Let it be known after you make your choice it is set in stone so no going back!

Also you are able to change your sex. So if you are male you could be a female furry in the human world or be a female human in the furry world. And Vice Versa.

submitted by Yiffing_Time
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submitted by Evilinc90
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I'm a female furry that has a gore fetish, I've been trying to look for good gore in the fandom but I can't find it. Any sites to recommend? And no I don't mean like the dragons burning other animals gore, I mean like bloody torture gore.

submitted by EllaExorcistCupcakes
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submitted by LadyJames
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