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Michele Light has spent years working to become one of the most recognizable furry artists working today. Now she’s turned her attention to a special project: Creating a series of sexy feline acrylic standees. Meet the Kitty Cat Cafe. “All my standees are solid acrylic, with an upright two-sided image secured to a thick base, which is custom fit to that particular image. All the artworks are my original creations, the actual standee production is handled by a third party in the UK. They have produced all my standees so far, and their work has been exemplary. All of the art for the initial five standees in this campaign have been submitted and proofed and are ready for production.” From now through June 21st, there’s a Kickstarter campaign to get the initial run created. It’s already (far!) surpassed its goal, but take a look to see what designs are available.

image c. 2024 by Michele Light

Hey Papabear!

I'll almost be 15 soon, which means that here in Oregon, I can get a low-level, probably fast food or ice cream, job. I want to save money for a fursuit, but I also want to put money towards college. For the maker I wanna commission, with a low-level job, it'll be probably a year of saving, to rack up at least 900 USD (to fit head accommodations as I wear glasses) with the calculations I've done with starting wages at my local fast food.

But that's not my actual question. My question is: I can't commission a fursuit on my own. I'd have to ask a parent or relative, and then give them the money I've saved. I'm thinking of asking my aunt, but how do I tell her without being embarrassed to the heavens and back? She's very accepting and knows that I'm a furry, but I'm terribly embarrassed to even bring it up.

How do I even do that?

Best wishes,
RaveCat Ivy
* * *

Dear RaveCat Ivy,

Thank you for your email, which can prove to be a great lesson for you and my other readers about a dirty word. And that word is this: Budgeting.

There is no reason that, with proper budgeting and planning, you can't save for your fursuit head yourself and begin saving for college (hoping that your parents will help, at least a little, with college?). Let's tackle the fursuit head first.

The $900 sounds reasonable for a quality, custom head. Make sure that you have a reliable maker on your side. This is very important. Do thorough research on the maker you want and ask their clients whether or not they had a good experience with the maker. That is, the maker should back up their work, make a quality product, be responsive to questions, and turn the work around in a reasonable time frame (and give you progress updates if it is taking time). Good makers are often backlogged, so if they ask for a turnaround time of a year or even 18 months, don't be too surprised (on the other paw, be very suspicious if they say they can give you a completed head in a few weeks). Most makers will want all or part of the money up front, so don't commission a work until you have the money saved up.

College, of course, is much more pricey than a fursuit. It's great that you're thinking of saving up now. But don't think you have to do it all yourself. Assuming you are not getting a full scholarship because you are a star athlete or have a genius grant, you're going to need some strategies here. Some ideas:

• For your first two years of college, attend a community college. Community colleges are actually quite excellent and their tuition is far lower than a four-year college, even if it is a state college. The student-to-teacher ratio is also much better at a community college (at big universities, too often you get stuck in lecture halls with hundreds of students being taught not by a professor but by an assistant, except for the lectures). Research 2-year colleges that have reciprocity programs with universities. That is, the credits you earn at the two-year college are fully transferable to the four-year college or university. Most of these agreements are between colleges in the same state, but sometimes there are interstate agreements such as the Oregon to California Reciprocity Agreement between select schools in California and Oregon. Also! In Oregon there is a program called The Oregon Promise that pays tuition to Oregon high school graduates attending community college!
• If they haven't already done so, have your parents set up a college fund for you. These are savings programs that accrue interest and also have tax benefits toward saving for college, such as the Oregon College Savings Program. The one catch, usually, with state programs is you will have to attend an Oregon school. That's not a big deal, though, as there are some fine colleges in Oregon.
• Research scholarships and grants. Every year, Oregon funds 40,000 students through the Oregon Opportunity Grant, which is aimed at students in lower income families. There are many other grants and scholarships available to you, many only require a 2.0 GPA. Check them out here. Now, you're too young yet to fill out a FAFSA, but you can still learn about what money is available to you by checking that page out.
• Don't forget, there are also work/study programs like this one at the University of Oregon. This is where you get a job working on campus or in government or in a nonprofit and the money goes to your tuition and expenses.
• Too, if you ever get birthday or Christmas money from relatives (or bonds), put them in the college fund.
• You don't have to go through this all alone. When it gets close to time (a year or two from college) set up an appointment with a financial advisor at your school of choice.
• If at all possible, try not to get bank loans. While college loans have pretty low interest rates, they still have a way of chasing you around for years after you graduate. Only use these as a last resort.

Whew! That's a lot of information, eh? You're at a great time to start learning about all of this stuff, though. It may give you a better idea of how much you will need to save in order to achieve your collegiate dreams. 

Once you have a financial goal in mind, it's time to budget. (There's that word again!) Once you find that job to start earning, start by setting up an Excel or other spreadsheet. Each month, put in your income, subtracting taxes and FIFA payments. Add other expenses, such as gas (if you drive) or bus fare to get to work. Then you are left with your actual income. Take a look at that and then establish a percentage or dollar amount you want to save each month toward that fursuit head and then, with what is left, decide how much you can put aside for college each month. (Go ahead and leave a little for yourself for "fun money" like going to a movie, but not too much).

Have a good idea of what your income is and where you are going with your money can really help lower anxieties you might have about paying for things. It really does help to have a plan!

Once you have that plan in place, I bet you won't have to ask any family members for help. If you can set aside, say, $150 a month toward a head, you will have your $900 in six months. All on your own, which is a matter of pride! Then, once you have paid off the head, you can take that $150 you were saving for the fursuit and add it toward your college fund.

Last issue: You're 14 and can't legally send money over the internet, so you need help from an adult. If your parents are amenable to the idea, one thing you can do is set up a Teen Checking Account. Many banks and credit unions will allow a teen under 18 to set up an account if their parents will sign for it. Tell your parents that this is a way to help you learn about money and balancing a checkbook etc. Then, you can write a check to the fursuit maker via snail mail or set up a PayPal or Venmo or suchlike account linked to your checking account. Or, set up a savings account, and you can write a Money Order based on the savings account.

If the above are not options, then yes, perhaps your aunt is the best person to turn to. If she already knows you're a furry, then what is there to be embarrassed about? Just tell her, "Hey, Auntie! You know I'm a furry, right? And one of the fun things you can do with being a furry is wear a costume, which is called a fursuit. I have saved up money for a fursuit head based on my fursona (my character). But I can't order it myself because I'm not 18 yet. If I give you the money, could you order it for me?"

Being direct is the best way to do it.


Happy Saving!

Papabear

“What the hell am I looking at?!” These were, no joke, the first words in my head and the first words out of my sister’s mouth when I first booted up PO’ed: Definitive Edition. Of all the games I’ve played, this one really tops the list of weirdest games I’ve played.

Happy Pride!

The furry community has always been strong with huge diversity from the LGBTQ+ community, and writers are no different. This month, we would like to respect those who identify as LGBTQ+, whether out and proud or still in the closet. Just know that you all have a welcoming environment within the Furry Writers Guild spaces. We do not tolerate bigotry of any kind.

And LGB is always with the T.

At the start of the month, we started to share posts on social media to spotlight LGBTQ+ authors – whether they’re members of the guild or not.

You can see our posts – and contribute your own works if you have not already done so, here:

https://furries.club/@furrywritersguild/112538465433534482

https://bsky.app/profile/furrywritersguild.bsky.social/post/3ktt5t3rcrs2a

https://twitter.com/FurWritersGuild/status/1796696108862959764

For the moment, most of the guild staff are hard at work on the editing phase for Blood and Water – we adored the stories submitted for the anthology, and we are very excited to share this work with everyone. After editing has finished, we expect to start pushing on with some of our plans for the remainder of the year. We hope to start sharing some things in the coming month.

For those looking to submit their stories to anthologies, we have the current open markets:

Furry Femdom Erotica – Deadline August 1st 2024
F/F Non Erotic Anthology – Deadline August 31st 2024
Isekai Me! – Deadline August 31st 2024
Spirit of the Wolf – Deadline March 31st 2025
Indecent Exposure – Deadline When Full
This Is Halloween – Deadline When Full
Children Of The Night – Deadline When Full
Furry/Lovecraftian/Erotic/University Themed Anthology – Deadline When Full
Beyond Their Pale – Deadline When Full

Please also check out our upcoming and recent releases from FWG members:

Gravitational Pull, by Ty Fox. Released April 15th.
Sun Runner, by Frances Pauli. Released May 30th.
Squeak Thief, by Kyell Gold. Released July 2024.
The Heavens Within Our Grasp, edited by Maddison Scott-Clary, featuring stories by multiple FWG Members. Available for pre-orders. Released July 1st 2024.
Far Flung, by Utunu. Available for pre-orders. Released July 3rd 2024.
The Eternal Party, by DarkEnd. Released July 4th 2024.
Therianthropic Dreams, by NightEyes DaySpring. Available for pre-orders. Released July 15th 2024.

As always, FWG members – let us know when you have a new book coming out soon!

Wishing you all a safe and joyful month of Pride.
J.F.R. Coates

This week Valraven played Wolf Territory, Blood of the Werewolf, and continued Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood! (May 28, 2024)

Valraven with the Uncivil Gamers Stream team is on a mission to play EVERY Wolf Game on Steam! Every week she'll choose at least one game that features or includes a wolf or werewolf! Then, the day after she'll give her likes and dislikes of each! Tune in every week at 8 PM CT on her Twitch channel, Twitch.tv/The_Valraven!

This comedic video series from the Uncivil Gamers stream team for GamingFurever.com explores new released games on a weekly basis. Our streamers each select one game that was just released within the week and each play through their own game. We then edit together the best and funniest moments from the gameplay and deliver them to you every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7 PM ET!

Description on Steam of "Baladins":  Embark on a whimsical journey and bring joy to a bright fantasy world in this roleplaying adventure for 1-4 players. Craft your own story and solve quests how you like, but beware, for every time you fail the Dragon will send you back in time! .

Link to video (also embedded below:) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp0yt_18W0U

Subscribe to Uncivil Gamers on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UncivilGamers

The first four episodes of Fur and Loathing are HERE (six episodes are coming out weekly.)

Before Episode 5 comes out, here’s a surprise bonus episode. This mid-series break is making time for the investigation team to develop new leads that emerged after the series began.

Patch interviews Nicky, and pitches him listener questions about investigating the 2014 Midwest Furfest chemical attack. This Dogpatch Press exclusive video is 20 minutes longer than the official half hour audio edit published everywhere else. (In the extra run time, you can hear about another attempt to disrupt the con… Video transcript below).

Exclusive document: FBI interview about the chemical attack.

Never published before, this document is a result of FOIA requests to law enforcement. The team at Brazen gained much more robust responses than past journalists did. From the stacks of papers, this is the FBI’s interview with a member of the Hazardous Materials Team at the Rosemont Public Safety Department.

FBI Interview of Rosemont Public Safety Department Sergeant Greg Brosch_(Redacted)

Interview video transcript

00:00:00:10 – 00:00:12:15
Patch O’Furr
Hello and welcome to the Fur & Loathing bonus episode with me and Nicky Woolf. I’m Patch O’Furr, and I’m here live from sunny, midnight California.

00:00:12:18 – 00:00:18:11
Nicky Woolf
Nice and thank you for staying up so late for this.

00:00:18:11 – 00:00:23:22
Patch O’Furr
I’m a bit of a werewolf, you know. I like the full moon. I like all the night times.

00:00:23:24 – 00:00:29:24
Nicky Woolf
Hell yeah. For listener context it is 1:15 a.m. in San Francisco right now.

00:00:30:10 – 00:00:36:24
Patch O’Furr
Yeah. So, Nicky, let’s do a quick refresher about the developments in the show so far.

00:00:37:07 – 00:01:10:12
Nicky Woolf
So episode four came out on Monday of this week. So we started out the show, we went to Midwest FurFest. We went to see the scene of the crime. Absolutely fabulous time at Midwest FurFest, and seeing the scene of the crime was a real kind of game changer, I think, for us, because the geography of the space is so different from how I’d been imagining and the things that would mean about how the gas had to spread completely kind of changed my view on things.

00:01:10:16 – 00:01:38:13
Nicky Woolf
And then we had this massive reach out through Freedom of Information requests to the FBI and to Rosemont Police, got an incredible treasure trove of documents back, which included the massive twist that the FBI’s final suspect that they were investigating in 2019, which is the last action we know the investigation took, was not the person that you and I started out thinking was our lead suspect.

00:01:38:13 – 00:02:02:15
Nicky Woolf
Well, we’ll get to those in a little bit. But a new suspect at the board, Caleb Kinkade, who we tracked down, he wasn’t named in the docs. We tracked him down using a combination of Google Street View, we knew what town it was in. We did sort of Google Street View around the town. We found the house. We knew he was in a blue house when he was interviewed and we found one.

00:02:02:20 – 00:02:22:20
Nicky Woolf
And then we zoomed in on it and saw a furry paw decal in the window. So we were like, Oh, this is our guy. And so then we found contact details for him. We got in touch and we went to Oklahoma to to chat with him and do our own little interrogation. And that was the episode that just just came out.

00:02:23:05 – 00:02:31:02
Patch O’Furr
I saw that you brought some insight on the police investigation that was even surprising to people who told me that they were there.

00:02:31:07 – 00:02:56:05
Nicky Woolf
Yes. The police investigation, it turns out, looked entirely different from how it did on the outside from the FBI docs. We know that they were working behind the scenes quite a bit more than you and I had both gone into this story thinking, in that they were running down leads in 2015, 2017 and and as late as 2019. So there was stuff going on beneath the surface.

00:02:58:02 – 00:03:19:21
Nicky Woolf
The problem was and we’ll get into that a little bit later, is that despite working on it, they made some pretty colossal screw ups, which seem to have been our guesses as that’s what kind of hobbled the investigation from being able to make any arrests or charges.

00:03:19:24 – 00:03:31:20
Patch O’Furr
Now, tell me, Nicky, what did we do to deserve a bonus episode? Were there any developments after the show started coming out? Can you give us any hints?

00:03:32:10 – 00:04:03:22
Nicky Woolf
So, yes, we’ve had we had a tip. Actually, you had a tip that we’re now chasing down and a few more bits of information have come out still in ongoing conversations with the FBI and a couple of other sources. And so we thought we’d put out a bonus episode to give an extra week to do a bit of reporting and chase down a few more leads before we go into the kind of final, final stretch of the show.

00:04:03:22 – 00:04:09:10
Patch O’Furr
Oh, man, that’s so exciting. Yeah, you’re changing it as we go.

00:04:09:21 – 00:04:18:14
Nicky Woolf
Yeah, I don’t want to say too much about those about those leads, but there’s some some pretty dramatic stuff in there. But no spoilers.

00:04:18:20 – 00:04:30:20
Patch O’Furr
We also got questions from from furry listeners coming up. Yeah, let’s go. Well, let’s see. I’m trying to operate my mouse with my giant paws!

00:04:31:04 – 00:04:58:23
Nicky Woolf
Oh, in the meantime, we can talk about one of the police screw ups, which is relevant to episode four that just came out. And we were doing a kind of re-dive through a lot of the Freedom of Information Act documents. And what happens in episode four, we end episode four coming out pretty much kind of catching the Oklahoma suspect in what we think exonerated him fairly.

00:05:00:10 – 00:05:30:03
Nicky Woolf
We were fairly confident and how we came out of that interview and then relooking through the FOIA docs and we had, you know, 300, 400 pages of documents buried really deep because we were looking at the investigation into Kinkade. One of the things that went wrong on the Caleb Kinkade, we’ll get into this in kind of episode six wrap up the two of the weird things.

00:05:30:03 – 00:06:05:17
Nicky Woolf
Actually, one of the things is that the tip off the FBI were chasing down with Caleb came four years before the incident and we thought that was a typo at first we thought, you know, they got a tip off in 2010. That must have been a typo. Right. But then when they go to interview Kinkade in 2019, they say, Hey, can you explain how this tip off came four years before the incident, to which they note Caleb’s response was, “What the fuck?”

00:06:06:07 – 00:06:27:21
Nicky Woolf
Which, yeah, that’s quite a reasonable response, to be honest, to being told that that some kind of time machine tip off came from before the event. We we have no other information in the documents about what the hell that was about. They said it was with some specificity to the incident. God only knows what that I mean. Honestly, that’s super weird.

00:06:28:19 – 00:07:01:14
Nicky Woolf
But the other thing that came out of this recent deep dive into the documents is that buried, buried way deep in one of the documents is that a different set of officers straight after the incident, when they said they first started looking into Kinkade pretty soon after the chlorine attack and quite early on, two task force officers who didn’t seem to be all that much in the rest of the documents, I think they were just kind of attached to it on the beat for that part of the investigation found–

00:07:01:21 – 00:07:32:21
Nicky Woolf
So Kinkade’s alibi had been that he was home with his disabled father, who he looks after, and that he’d gone to visit his nephew on the Saturday and they found a witness who said and it’s super heavily redacted and poorly phrased, so no one seems to have noticed it, including the rest of the FBI. But they chased down his alibi and it stood up in 2014.

00:07:32:21 – 00:08:05:24
Nicky Woolf
And that’s why we didn’t see it, because it was in the old docs. They were still investigating him for five years after that. So it seems like someone at the at the task force maybe filed the papers wrong or something. But I think the rest of the FBI don’t seem to have seen that part of the documents any more than we did before just a few days ago, because it’s so deeply buried and it’s phrased in a way that unless you really, really parse it, looks like it’s hidden.

00:08:06:07 – 00:08:34:23
Nicky Woolf
It says that they hadn’t seen him since Thanksgiving and was at his mother in law’s house. And we thought that meant that he was there for Thanksgiving. There’s actually a full stop there, which is partly covered by one of the redacteds. So that means it actually says, but on the night at ten so 1030, he was placed in Oklahoma, which on top of what he told us, that we feel exonerated him

00:08:34:23 – 00:08:58:10
Nicky Woolf
in the interview, the FBI had also stood up his alibi. So why he was their the main and final suspect in 2019 is even more baffling and speaks even more to the situation where the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing in this investigation. That’s just been so completely wild to me. But yeah, institutional, you know, fuck ups at every turn.

00:08:59:05 – 00:09:33:19
Nicky Woolf
And that’s also on top of the fact that they screwed up the evidence testing on site. And we spoke to someone from the FBI who was in a few episodes ago who said that it was wildly beyond— it seems like the FBI, where we’re trying to get confirmation of exactly when the FBI was informed. It doesn’t seem like they were informed until much later on the Sunday after the attack, because if the FBI had been informed at the time, there is no way they would have allowed people back into the hotel.

00:09:33:21 – 00:10:03:24
Nicky Woolf
They would have treated it as an active crime scene until all investigations were. But the Rosemont police, the Rosemont first responders cleared up the stairwell, cleared the crime scene, tidied it up. Wild, absolutely wild. I can only imagine someone someone at the FBI when they found this out, must have hit the roof. I mean, absolutely gone, like, “What the hell were you doing?”

00:10:03:24 – 00:10:20:23
Nicky Woolf
[Laugh] It was the Weapons of Mass Destruction Unit was called in, and they must have been like, “What the hell are you doing? What the hell have you done? There’s people in our crime scene.”

00:10:22:06 – 00:10:36:06
Patch O’Furr
Well, hey, it’s it’s really interesting to hear it from you. Well I wanted to jump to the other topic, I wanted to ask, how do people like the show? Have you been hearing from people?

00:10:36:09 – 00:11:03:06
Nicky Woolf
Yeah, seems to be going down really well. The reviews have been great. People seem to like it. It seems like— and this was very meaningful to us while we were making it, because obviously it’s a show for a general audience, but this is also really meaningful to us that the that it be something that the very community could enjoy and be proud of and that would do justice to representing that community.

00:11:03:06 – 00:11:05:09
Nicky Woolf
And I hope we’ve— I hope we’ve achieved that.

00:11:05:09 – 00:11:20:10
Patch O’Furr
Yeah. So I had a question from a listener Dralen Dragonfox over in Toronto, just asked “What kind of response have you received from the broader furry community?” And I guess you just answered that.

00:11:22:12 – 00:11:23:15
Nicky Woolf
Very positive!

00:11:23:15 – 00:11:29:02
Patch O’Furr
But I can jump in as well because I think—

00:11:29:02 – 00:11:30:11
Nicky Woolf
Yeah, what have you been hearing.

00:11:30:11 – 00:11:54:13
Patch O’Furr
So I am seeing fantastic reactions from anybody who’s ever heard the show. Just just beautiful, really great reviews. They love the quality of the show, but also how much you care. And that’s kind of surprising to some people. And I think we’re just lucky to have your professionalism on the story.

00:11:54:13 – 00:11:55:01
Nicky Woolf
Thank you.

00:11:55:01 – 00:12:23:21
Patch O’Furr
There is another side to this, because I am seeing people who obviously have not listened to the show and they’re still spreading the same old denial and the story that, “Oh, it was just an accident. We don’t believe there was ever any crime at all.” And there’s sometimes people are attacking the people who are doing the reporting, calling it fake news, saying there’s nothing new here.

00:12:24:13 – 00:12:47:00
Patch O’Furr
And, you know, it’s kind of disappointing, but it’s— I don’t know how surprising it is, but I also say that’s a great reason that the story needs to be told and people should also know how much work it took. And how much effort we’re putting into it with the whole team over at Brazen.

00:12:47:00 – 00:13:06:15
Nicky Woolf
And also, you’ve been working on this for four years. You’ve been, you know, putting in the lonely legwork of of standing this story up and being like this. This is something that matters. And I think to a certain extent, I think some of it comes down to what we were talking about just before, which is the police didn’t seem to be taking it all that seriously.

00:13:06:15 – 00:13:11:04
Nicky Woolf
So I think quite reasonably, people’s reactions have been, “Alright. So why should we?”

00:13:11:11 – 00:13:21:08
Patch O’Furr
You know what we know. Let me just ask you for a little rundown on the kind of work that you’re doing. First off, how many states have you gone to?

00:13:21:08 – 00:13:46:18
Nicky Woolf
So we have been to Illinois to to Midwest FurFest, and we have been to Oklahoma to talk with Caleb Kinkade, the Oklahoma suspect, the FBI suspect. And we have been to Wisconsin. And that is that trip is going to be a episode five, which comes out next week, a week today, when this when this broadcast.

00:13:46:18 – 00:13:50:14
Patch O’Furr
I remember there was a little bit with me over in California that was pretty cool.

00:13:51:04 – 00:13:56:02
Nicky Woolf
Oh, yeah. Well, I didn’t get to go., which was— I was very sad about that. That was with Nick.

00:13:56:15 – 00:13:58:21
Patch O’Furr
Yeah, we have to meet. I’m going to have to get you a drink.

00:13:59:03 – 00:14:00:21
Nicky Woolf
I know. I’m going to get you a drink.

00:14:01:05 – 00:14:05:06
Patch O’Furr
Yeah. How many helpers are on the team, by the way?

00:14:05:19 – 00:14:32:19
Nicky Woolf
That’s a really good opportunity to shout out to all the people who’ve done so much hard work on this, Arnav and Lucy our researchers have been so fantastic. They’ve done just incredible work. And Goat Rodeo, the whole production team, especially Max and Ian, who worked extremely hard on this. The total size of the team. I mean, it sort of depends how you count it.

00:14:32:19 – 00:14:49:13
Nicky Woolf
There were like some producers who also helped out. Then Nick has helped out with a whole load of edits. That’s Nick who you met in California, but yeah, everyone at Brazen and everyone at Goat Rodeo, it’s just been terrific.

00:14:49:23 – 00:14:54:01
Patch O’Furr
And in your travels, how many people have you talked to so far?

00:14:55:23 – 00:15:38:21
Nicky Woolf
Oh, I’d have to go into our interviews. I think we we reached out to, and in some cases exchanged some messages with, skyward of 100 people. And I think we’ve spoken to and done formal interviews with at least 20, 25 spoken off the record or informal interviews with maybe another 25. So yeah, lots and lots of people, lots of voices have gone into informing this reporting. There’s been a real — and I think quite understandable — reluctance of of people in the community to speak because of how often, you know, the community gets burned by the media, and how often journalists will come in and sort of ridicule or not really

00:15:38:22 – 00:16:04:02
Nicky Woolf
understand, or go through the old kind of tropes of just being like a sort of internet sex thing, you know, from the George Gurley article [in Vanity Fair], even the title of the podcast, Fur & Loathing, as any furry listening to this will know, is the title of a CSI episode that was really just a hit job on the community.

00:16:04:18 – 00:16:27:05
Nicky Woolf
And so then you were talking about this. We talked about how the title will will be received. And I think in that sense, it’s also been positive. People have people have said it— but, you know, people have mentioned it. And when that’s come up on on Twitter or BlueSky, I’ve said, yeah, we went back and forth.

00:16:27:10 – 00:16:41:06
Nicky Woolf
I just personally liked the name and hopefully we can reclaim it. Hopefully we can be the the Google search for that above the CSI thing and sort of memory-hole the CSI. That’s the idea.

00:16:41:11 – 00:17:10:22
Patch O’Furr
So you’ve got a whole ton of people, some very fuzzy and colorful ones and now that makes me curious about one of the very clever ones we’ve already heard from: Caleb. I want to talk about meeting him. And I actually have a listener question from Flen, the silly wolf-otter. So Flen asks, he says, “I’m from North Georgia, but I want to know what Oklahoma was like.”

00:17:10:22 – 00:17:16:09
Patch O’Furr
“I bet it was culture shock and Caleb seems like an interesting guy.”

00:17:16:20 – 00:17:42:06
Nicky Woolf
He’s a fascinating dude. I mean, going to Oklahoma was less of a culture shock for me than than it might have been because I’ve been based in the U.S. as a general assignment news reporter for a really long time. So I hadn’t actually been to Oklahoma, I think, before, but I think that made it the 46th state I’ve been to.

00:17:42:18 – 00:18:12:09
Nicky Woolf
So I’ve only got, I think, Montana, one of the Dakotas and one of the states, two of the states that are basically next to Montana to go. So I’m yeah, I lived in Ohio for a while, so Oklahoma’s bit more southern, but still where we were had a bit of Midwestern vibes as well. That’s going to annoy more people than anything else I say on this show.

00:18:13:11 – 00:18:15:14
Nicky Woolf
But yeah, I think Ohio prepared me for Oklahoma.

00:18:16:03 – 00:18:37:03
Patch O’Furr
Well, a lot more states than I’ve been to! I got to catch up with you, right? Yeah, so when you were chatting with Caleb, I thought it was, you know, really funny to hear stories about fart competitions. But, you know, I told some friends actually recording it is a feat of podcasting.

00:18:37:21 – 00:19:01:00
Nicky Woolf
So yeah, we had a a microphone, a shotgun mic that was on a boom. Luckily for Nick, who was holding it— I don’t know if Nick or Max was holding it, but very much at arm’s length trying to capture the sound. But yeah, I can well believe he’s a champion. He was really a powerfully good farter.

00:19:01:10 – 00:19:04:24
Patch O’Furr
Quite a voice. Did you have to do extra takes?

00:19:05:17 – 00:19:08:13
Nicky Woolf
Oh, he, gave us as many takes as we wanted. Yeah.

00:19:10:01 – 00:19:13:11
Patch O’Furr
Good job! A new milestone in your career.

00:19:14:00 – 00:19:38:18
Nicky Woolf
He was pretty, obviously, and as I say in the episode, somebody being charming and nice doesn’t preclude them from you know, it doesn’t mean their innocence. I think his innocence was showed by the mistakes he made about not knowing in the episode how the attack took place, but boasting about knowing. So he he got it wrong.

00:19:39:05 – 00:20:02:07
Nicky Woolf
So he thought that was a strong indicator. And then that was backed up by the fact that someone on the task force in 2014 before five more years of investigating him, but nonetheless his alibi stood up to the FBI. But yeah, he was he was really nice and he was generous with his time and spends a heck of a yarn.

00:20:02:19 – 00:20:31:01
Patch O’Furr
Okay, well, you know, it must be hard to view just sort of put in the spotlight like that with such a serious story. So I will let that rest for him and move on, because coming up, there’s another suspect. We named him: Robert Sojkowski.

00:20:31:01 – 00:21:03:08
Nicky Woolf
Yeah. This is Robert Sojkowski. Very controversial figure in the community. In the next episode coming up, we start to evaluate where things are with him and but but yeah — another really interesting angle of investigation. I don’t want to go too much further down down that road, but I think I think people are going to be really interested to hear what happened when we went up to Wisconsin.

00:21:03:14 – 00:21:07:20
Patch O’Furr
Yeah, I would avoid spoilers, but you know, I interviewed him in 2018.

00:21:08:06 – 00:21:09:06
Nicky Woolf
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:21:09:16 – 00:21:16:07
Patch O’Furr
Let me just ask, what did you do to try to reach him?

00:21:16:07 – 00:21:43:00
Nicky Woolf
It was it was hard to track him down. Not as difficult as tracking Caleb down because, you know, he still has things like his YouTube channel running and we got a whole bunch of numbers for him and a Telegram handle. And the Telegram was still active. So one of the cold calls were made to him is on Telegram and that’s the one he responded to.

00:21:43:16 – 00:21:59:20
Nicky Woolf
I mean, again, this is neither proof of guilt nor innocence, but he has also been open with us and has been willing to talk and has also been generous with his time. So well, you know, that’s not a data point one way or the other, but I think it’s it’s worth saying.

00:22:00:16 – 00:22:05:22
Patch O’Furr
Okay. Did you want to say anything else about the behavior or are we just going to find out?

00:22:06:03 – 00:22:09:17
Nicky Woolf
Let’s let’s hold off on that. We’ll get to that.

00:22:09:17 – 00:22:24:10
Patch O’Furr
Okay. Well, let’s get back to what the listeners want to know. I’ve got a lot of questions and I guess, yeah, we can start out with BowieBarks. And Bowie. asks—

00:22:24:10 – 00:22:25:00
Nicky Woolf
Hello, Bowie.

00:22:28:10 – 00:22:39:18
Patch O’Furr
And Bowie has questions about going to the Midwest FurFest. Seeing that it was your first furry convention, what did you enjoy most?

00:22:40:11 – 00:23:43:14
Nicky Woolf
I loved every second of Midwest FurFest. It was just such a joyous, just a brilliant environment to be and just so visually overwhelming and the vibes were fantastic. My favorite moment of it, and actually someone I forgot to give a shout out to is Tommy Bruce, photographer who was the first furry we ever got in touch with for the show. First person we spoke to, and was very kind and showed me around Midwest FurFest, and has been also kind of our furry moral compass with this. We’ve had this kind of fascinating conversation going and we went to this screaming— er, screening review of a whole bunch of short films made in VRChat.

00:23:44:16 – 00:24:20:21
Nicky Woolf
And they were fabulous. There was a lot of in-jokes that only a few people were getting, so we’d have one film, and like one very specific group in the room would burst out laughing and they were just surreal kind of comedic things. And then interspersed into those were these just beautiful, heartbreaking kind of, you know, goodbyes to to someone who maybe passed away or just I-miss-yous to people who live across the world, many kind of people who only interact and get to get to meet in VRChat.

00:24:22:06 – 00:24:30:18
Nicky Woolf
And so it was like swinging between like laughter and tears the whole time. It was just beautiful, like, really, really moving.

00:24:30:24 – 00:24:43:03
Patch O’Furr
So nice. Wow. Yeah. So Bowie went on to ask, was there anything that challenged you?

00:24:43:07 – 00:25:31:24
Nicky Woolf
Challenged— I mean, just trying to see everything was such a challenge. There’s so much on. We were running from— we went from a panel on the very beginnings of history of the fandom, which was fascinating. Running from there to a panel on— this was dramatic to me., it was not just a panel on fursuit making, it was a panel by three big fursuit makers on just how to get your commission even noticed by them. And you know these are people who are making a suit for $10,000, $15,000 and just to get your commission noticed by them was something that needed a panel that gave advice.

00:25:32:08 – 00:26:00:12
Nicky Woolf
But just getting from all of these panels, from panel to panel to, you know, stall to stall, trying to see everything was exhausting. And I think Cara, who’s the producer who was with me, her Apple Watch or something, said that we’d walked something like 14 kilometers over the course of each day, maybe more. Just doing that in a full fursuit…

00:26:00:12 – 00:26:03:19
Nicky Woolf
… must be— and it is hot. I mean, it is like—

00:26:04:21 – 00:26:06:15
Patch O’Furr
Wow.

00:26:06:15 – 00:26:07:04
Nicky Woolf
So yeah.

00:26:08:09 – 00:26:11:08
Patch O’Furr
This is why they have a fursuit lounge.

00:26:12:03 – 00:26:16:20
Nicky Woolf
Air-conditioned all the way down.

00:26:16:20 – 00:26:37:09
Patch O’Furr
Saves lives. Yeah. Okay, so, boy, I’ve got quite a list here. One more for BowieBarks. And this is a hard one. You don’t have to spend a lot of time on this. But you called furries a bellwether for the rest of the world. What you think is coming?

00:26:37:09 – 00:27:01:05
Nicky Woolf
That is a huge question. And I think what I meant was furries and kind of all digital communities to me in this kind of— There’s like a deep theoretical answer to this that it’s more like an essay unto itself, but in brief, I think what the Internet has done is changed the geography of communication almost completely.

00:27:03:00 – 00:27:33:06
Nicky Woolf
And I think the furry fandom is a good example of how you can have a fandom that I think Uncle Kage said it in a really good way when we spoke to him, but it was that it’s a fandom without a corporate piece of content that is being fandomed. It’s like a self-made fandom, you know? It’s not cosplay in the way that people are dressing up as Marvel characters or Disney characters and things like that.

00:27:34:14 – 00:28:09:12
Nicky Woolf
And I don’t think you could have that without the Internet, without that kind of peer-to-peer communication network. But I also think that the effect of that peer-to-peer communication network that allow, you know, folks who might be in a small town, not have a huge amount in common with the people around them and have found the furry community online as that community and again, through these VR videos, we saw a lot of that emotion coming through.

00:28:09:12 – 00:28:50:14
Nicky Woolf
But unfortunately, that same infrastructure makes it much easier for the far right to both infiltrate and organize. And I think within the furry fandom, we saw a lot of that, especially in 2017 when oh God, to even have to name him when when you know who that guy started to try to come to furry conventions. And, you know, these alt right figures saw it as an opportunity to infiltrate and you end up with things like the furry raiders.

00:28:51:18 – 00:29:19:05
Nicky Woolf
So I think the Internet does both of those things. And I think wider society, more more traditional groups in society are starting to experience that as communication becomes more and more similarly online and more kind of mainstream groupings and and even politics. And we’re already seeing, you know, Donald Trump is running for president again. That doesn’t happen without the Internet.

00:29:19:17 – 00:29:24:11
Patch O’Furr
Okay. Next question from Arrkay the Bird. Yeah, Arrkay…

00:29:24:18 – 00:29:25:21
Nicky Woolf
Hello Arrkay!

00:29:26:05 – 00:29:32:10
Patch O’Furr
… asks, is there any hope for justice or new evidence that the police can use to prosecute?

00:29:33:00 – 00:30:12:08
Nicky Woolf
So the thing that’s difficult in that question is one thing we ran up against, we spoke to some experts to try and firm it out and all we could really got was it’s complicated, but we’re fairly sure that there is a statute of limitations issue on what happened. Now, the statute of limitations in Illinois is at a default five years, which is why we think the FBI made a final push to be interviewing Caleb in 2019 because that was just before the five year timeline.

00:30:13:11 – 00:30:42:23
Nicky Woolf
Now, there’s nothing in the documents that specify that there’s a statute of limitations. And one of the formal questions that we’ve asked the FBI for comment on was this question. And they said no comment. Statute of limitations would be different on a federal terrorism charge, which is one of the potential things that could be being looked into. Another thing the FBI wouldn’t answer as is this case still being it’s still open, still considered under investigation.

00:30:42:23 – 00:31:03:09
Nicky Woolf
They wouldn’t say, well, I think pretty standard for the FBI to answer those kind of questions with no comment. But we we don’t know if new information that we bring up from the podcast and we’ve heard from different sources. We’ve spoke to some of the same sources the FBI have. We think we’ve spoken to different sources. We have different eyewitness testimony.

00:31:05:04 – 00:31:18:06
Nicky Woolf
But no idea if if this will lead to more law enforcement action because they’re so opaque and because we don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes and what kind of pressure they might be under.

00:31:18:07 – 00:31:24:09
Patch O’Furr
Well, that makes a good link to the next question. And this one is also from Dralen Dragonfox.

00:31:25:11 – 00:31:26:01
Nicky Woolf
Hi, Dralen

00:31:27:10 – 00:31:45:18
Patch O’Furr
Dralen says, I love the accidental support that you got from the FBI with the badly redacted FOIA files. Have you seen that before or have you seen them mess up on purpose, like some misspell names so they can say there’s no documents?

00:31:46:14 – 00:32:19:09
Nicky Woolf
That definitely happens. In this case, it doesn’t seem like they were doing redactions to avoid it. It was almost so dramatic compared to previous reporting that happened on this case. We got so much more documents than, say, Vice did when they sent their requests. That was a piece that this maybe five years ago. It could be some sometimes it’s as simple as you capture FOIA officer in the right mood and they’re like, okay, yeah, maybe we will.

00:32:19:13 – 00:32:42:24
Nicky Woolf
Sometimes you’ve no idea whether it’s been run up the chain or not, whether someone at the FBI has said, “OK, we want to get these documents out, maybe they can find something that will allow us to—”. There’s also a lot of accidents that go on. I think a lot of our documents were very poorly redacted and that may have been incompetence.

00:32:43:04 – 00:33:05:10
Nicky Woolf
We don’t know whose. Some of the documents were from Rosemont Police, but were given to us by the FBI for their response. We don’t know who did the redactions that we don’t know if it was Rosemont-redacted or FBI-redacted. I mean, in one case, they put somebody’s Social Security Number unredacted and now that’s—

00:33:06:00 – 00:33:46:01
Nicky Woolf
That’s a screw up. I mean, that should not be in a Freedom of Information Act document with that being there. They also — and this is an interesting sign about how how they think about the furry community — is that they would redact, uh, witnesses, real-world name and not redact their fursona name, which implies they just sort of don’t know how, how core a piece of identity a fursona name is and how easy it would be for someone who really wanted to, to identify, you know, to track down a person with their fursona name.

00:33:46:01 – 00:34:09:22
Nicky Woolf
And in the past I’ve had documents released to me accidentally. I did a FOIA investigation when I was at The Guardian into a national security story about police surveillance. And we sent a Freedom of Information request to, 50-something police departments. And one of them gave us classified documents either by accident or because they wanted them to come out.

00:34:10:07 – 00:34:22:22
Nicky Woolf
So it can it can happen positively. But yeah, there have definitely been stories of purposeful misspellings being introduced into FOIA docs in order to make journalists lives difficult, so it goes both ways.

00:34:22:22 – 00:34:40:17
Patch O’Furr
You really have to finesse it and know what you’re doing. BowieBarks dropped in another comment, he said another podcast was saying to be vague with FOIA to keep them from guessing exactly what you’re trying to get at so they don’t redact it.

00:34:40:24 – 00:35:12:03
Nicky Woolf
I would say if we’re doing advice to you know, general FOIA advice ,you can’t really ask a vague question because they aren’t giving yes or no answers, they’re either providing a document or not. So document specificity is the most important thing if you’re looking for a police report and you know roughly what date, all that kind of thing is what I would put in.

00:35:12:05 – 00:35:38:10
Nicky Woolf
It’s not the same thing as asking a journalistic question. So you can’t put a FOIA request in saying something like, is this still active? You have to say, we want all email communication between X and Y date between this agent’s email address and responding to a keyword search of X, Y and Z.

00:35:39:01 – 00:35:59:22
Nicky Woolf
That’s the kind of thing that helps with a FOIA response. If you know even more about what the documents might be, that’s your kind of best shot going in with a Freedom of Information Act request. If you give them any vagueness, that’ll give them an opportunity, an excuse to to not to not give you back anything.

00:36:00:23 – 00:36:42:00
Nicky Woolf
So that’s FOIA advice, okay. Let me look at Arnav and see if that’s good FOIA advice. Arnav’s the FOIA king. I’m getting a thumbs up on that advice. On the subject of FOIAs, we will be sharing some of the FOIA docs as we go and we will have one exclusively for Dogpatch Press, which will be the first original incident report that people can go through and read. It’ll go up on Monday along with this video, so people can have a look through and get a little window into what a FOIA document looks like and see what happened on on the night as well through the through the eyes of the first responders.

00:36:43:18 – 00:36:45:14
Nicky Woolf
So that’ll be fun.

00:36:45:15 – 00:36:57:18
Patch O’Furr
That is that is some exciting direct documents there. How much support did you have from the FBI and local police, versus how much did you actually have to work in spite of them?

00:36:58:19 – 00:37:27:15
Nicky Woolf
Except for the surprisingly generous FOIA response we’ve had very, very little cooperation from either the FBI or Rosemont. None of our direct questions to them, none of the official questions have been answered with anything other than a no comment. Even for working with the security agencies, which I’ve done a lot of before in my career., this has been a real code of silence.

00:37:27:24 – 00:38:05:01
Nicky Woolf
This is unusually unhelpful, non-compliant surprisingly, which is what makes this and this is just kind of vibe-based, it is how they would be responding— It’s more likely how they would be responding if this was still an active case or if they thought this could still be an active case. But it’s also, to a certain extent, it’s their default way of being so it’s hard to read too much into that.

00:38:05:01 – 00:38:22:06
Nicky Woolf
But yeah, we’ve had to work with the documents, which again have been hugely, hugely important to the to the investigation. But in terms of actively speaking with the FBI in Rosemont, it’s been despite them definitely.

00:38:22:06 – 00:38:39:12
Patch O’Furr
Okay. Well, that might actually answer the next question. And this is again, this is Arrkay the Bird and Arrkay asks, “Are there interviews coming up with law enforcement who took the case seriously?”

00:38:39:12 – 00:39:17:22
Nicky Woolf
No, they have not allowed us access to any of the officers involved or anyone who might even represent the officers involved. And again, I think we said this earlier, but Agent Defeo, Shaun Rose, if you guys want to get in contact, I think you guys have done good work and good for both of you for sticking with it in what seem to be quite difficult, internal conditions. If either if you want to chat my, you know, my emails are open. But yeah we’ve been offered no access to them whatsoever.

00:39:17:22 – 00:39:52:24
Patch O’Furr
Okay, let’s see. Well, we have a question from Bean and you know, this is a funny one. I want to start off saying that when you choose a fursona, there are certain cartoon characters that are just instantly, you know, it’s fun to recognize. Like, for example, if you want to have an animal who is a bank robber then it might be a raccoon — you’ve got stripes, you’ve got the mask.

00:39:53:15 – 00:39:54:15
Nicky Woolf
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:39:55:08 – 00:40:01:01
Patch O’Furr
So If you chose a persona, what would it be?

00:40:01:13 – 00:40:26:03
Nicky Woolf
So this is a great question because going into when we went to Midwest FurFest, we had this idea of doing a scene where we get people together and, you know, find find Nicky’s fursona. And obviously my last name is Woolf. So part of that might be easy. But I was also thinking of, you know, some based on puns and things like that.

00:40:26:13 – 00:41:14:09
Nicky Woolf
But the more people we spoke to, the more I started to get the feeling that actually that was maybe not offensive necessarily, but kind of in poor taste. I think it was Tommy again who who might have said this but it was or it might have been someone else we spoke to — but it was the idea that that it wasn’t taking it seriously, that a fursona is for a lot of people, a really meaningful and important part of their lives and picking one, you know, finding a pun and being like what’s mine felt like it wasn’t taking that as seriously as it deserved to.

00:41:14:09 – 00:41:37:13
Nicky Woolf
Someone even might have said that it’s sort of like, what’s your gaysona? You know, like and that kind of— they’re not directly comparable. But yeah, we sort of shelved that idea as being in slightly poor taste. But I think given my name is Woolf, if I was— it would be a wolf, I think.

00:41:37:13 – 00:41:54:16
Patch O’Furr
Let’s see. Well, now Bowie is here with another question. Boy, he’s a very curious dog here. Will you be involved with the community more or will you do any other investigations related to furries?

00:41:55:04 – 00:42:24:15
Nicky Woolf
So I already went into this with lots of friends in the fandom. I’ve come out with lots more. I’d love to go to more cons. I had such a great time. So yeah, I think I’ll definitely stay involved. And other investigations, absolutely. Looking for more stories. It’s part of my— my kind of beat is internet subcultures and furries are such a huge part of that

00:42:24:15 – 00:42:46:21
Nicky Woolf
Actually, so for example, in the QAnon podcast I did, we worked very closely with a guy called Fred Brennan who’s also in the fandom, which is interesting. So yeah, it just shows how much crossover there is with the furry fandom with other kind of internet subcultures and communities.

00:42:48:10 – 00:42:58:20
Patch O’Furr
Okay, let’s see. Well, Arrkay asks, “Are there any ideas for a season two?” I’m just going to say you’ll find out.

00:42:58:20 – 00:43:15:06
Nicky Woolf
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Watch this space or listen to this space, I guess. But I will say if people— help in terms of getting season two: if everyone can leave nice reviews on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and things, that always helps.

00:43:15:13 – 00:43:40:04
Patch O’Furr
So tell all your friends, share it around, since your fine work is worth sharing. I guess we’re getting towards wrapping up a little bit. And I just wanted to point out — one point the show makes is how much the police messed up. I’m just curious, do you see any lessons?

00:43:40:04 – 00:44:28:23
Nicky Woolf
There’s some specific ones and some general ones. Some of the specific ones, as we found out and a lot of this was in the first two episodes, but we found out some pretty unpleasant stuff about Rosemont Police Department itself. Rosemont is this weird, financially designed town. It’s got a population of about 3,000 at a budget in the high millions because all these conventions happen, there are all these kind of business centers, the airport hotels are there, and they’re a tiny police force run internally, that’s independent of a major police force like Chicago.

00:44:30:06 – 00:44:59:08
Nicky Woolf
And it seems like there were some quite serious organizational failures within that police department that we think may well have contributed quite heavily to the early mistakes that were made. And certainly there were other allegations of things going on in Rosemont Police Department that that we heard that build a picture of it being pretty disorganized place. And for some of the people we spoke to a kind of unpleasant place to work too.

00:44:59:16 – 00:45:31:00
Nicky Woolf
And then the organizational stuff is whenever something like this happens, you have so many different agencies that get involved, so much paperwork is produced. When you have three different divisions at the FBI, you’ve got field office, you’ve got the WMD unit, you’ve got the Behavioral Analysis Unit, and then you’ve got the Rosemont Police Department, you’ve got Chicago Fire, who were also some of the first responders, because Rosemont asked for their assistance.

00:45:31:00 – 00:46:12:03
Nicky Woolf
And that’s how you end up with stuff like one part of the investigation checking up on, say, Caleb’s alibi, but other parts of the investigation seeming not to have realized. And you just end up with all these communication failures where one part of the investigation doesn’t know what the other part is doing. Rosemont Police Department destroyed what might have been some crucial evidence, such as the tapes of police interviews with suspects. We are trying to figure out if that’s standard practice.

00:46:12:11 – 00:46:31:02
Nicky Woolf
That’s one of the things that we’ve asked the FBI. That’s another of the things the FBI has given us a flat “no comment” on is where the chain of custody of the evidence is, because, again, they cleared the crime scene straight afterwards. This is the Rosemont responders. We don’t know where the broken glass from the device ended up.

00:46:31:02 – 00:47:00:09
Nicky Woolf
We don’t know if that’s in some kind of locker somewhere or if it was literally just thrown away. That all kinds of different people who are handling evidence all with different aims, and then you’ve got what people are investigating for. We don’t know what specific crime is being investigated. And that’s an important question for the statute of limitations question because a federal terrorist defense will have a different statute of limitations to the basic Illinois five years.

00:47:00:24 – 00:47:33:10
Nicky Woolf
We don’t know if the case was being investigated as a terroristic crime or as something lesser. We think if they were making a push for the five-year statute of limitations, they were looking for something lesser than than a terrorist offense. But we don’t know. All of this stuff is very opaque. It’s hard to come out of this question with what is, I think, obvious to anyone who’s followed any kind of the news in the United States…

00:47:33:17 – 00:47:39:23
Nicky Woolf
… for any of the last ten years. But I think some law enforcement reform probably wouldn’t go amiss in general.

00:47:40:14 – 00:48:07:03
Patch O’Furr
So earlier I mentioned that there were non-listeners who were just denying and dismissing the story, saying there wasn’t a crime, there’s no news, you know, I mean they haven’t listened to it. So I just wanted to make a little reminder about the gravity of the story. And if we put the attack next to others like it, is it really fair to call this one of the biggest ones?

00:48:07:20 – 00:48:51:12
Nicky Woolf
Yes, ultimately. There has not been, as far as I know, an attack— a single attack of this scale. The reason that we’ve been calling it the second biggest chemical weapon attack is that the 2001 anthrax campaign, I think, hospitalized fewer people but killed three people. And some of that— one of the things we’ve heard from law enforcement that we’ve talked to who weren’t involved in the case, but former law enforcement who are giving us advice, is that the fact that nobody died, I think may have put it in a different law enforcement category, even though 19 people were hospitalized, including one infant.

00:48:51:12 – 00:49:18:22
Nicky Woolf
And it’s very serious. But, yeah, there’s not really been anything of this scale before or since. And yeah, we’ve spoken to a lot of former former law enforcement and former FBI who’ve all started off saying, Yeah, “What the hell are you talking about?” And we run down the details of the story, the scale of the, you know, the casualties, the number of people who were hospitalized.

00:49:19:08 – 00:49:42:07
Nicky Woolf
And universally, all of their responses have been, “Holy shit, how am I just hearing about this now for the first time?” And I think that’s a very good question. I mean, we’ve spoken to people who were working in the chemical weapons investigative unit for national FBI. And when someone like that is saying, “How the fuck did this not come across my desk?”

00:49:43:23 – 00:49:50:07
Nicky Woolf
I think that’s a really good question. How the hell did that not come across their desk?

00:49:50:07 – 00:49:56:13
Patch O’Furr
Is there anything we could say on behalf of the victims? Did you speak to anybody who was hospitalized?

00:49:57:01 – 00:50:20:07
Nicky Woolf
We didn’t. And I think quite reasonably so. We have a lot of written testimonial sources and lot of contemporary documents we got in touch with— we reached out to almost everyone who we knew was affected and people declined to speak, I think probably quite reasonably, because it was a very traumatic event.

00:50:20:07 – 00:50:45:20
Nicky Woolf
So I wouldn’t want to speak on on their behalf. I do think one of the questions and maybe a question for you and and also a question that we want to ask for people in the community is what should a punishment for this crime be? What would be fair justice? What would that look like? And that’s something that isn’t my place to answer.

00:50:46:20 – 00:51:16:08
Patch O’Furr
One of the things that stands out to me, which I don’t know, is part of your, you know, the math behind figuring out what to do with this story. But from inside the community, I recognize this attack is actually only the first one that was a terror attack or a would-be terror plan that was targeting Midwest FurFest.

00:51:17:01 – 00:51:37:12
Patch O’Furr
And the other one is generally not even recognized. People know half of the story but they don’t know the deeper half and that half of the story is in 2019 when alt-right personality Milo [Yiannopoulos] wanted to go to the con and people.

00:51:39:14 – 00:51:40:09
Nicky Woolf
He-who-shall-not-be-named.

00:51:40:14 – 00:52:12:15
Patch O’Furr
Yeah, sorry, we’ll just use— we’ll just call him Mr. M. Well, in 2019, Mr. M there, wanted to attend Midwest FurFest and it was recognized as a kind of a troll plan and he was rebuffed. He was rejected in advance of the con. But what almost nobody saw or knew was there was a deeper plan to bring the Proud Boys.

00:52:13:04 – 00:52:37:06
Patch O’Furr
And of course, they went on to do the January 6 riot at the Capitol. So this was a plan to bring domestic terrorism, street violence by a group that is now officially convicted of terrorism to a furry convention. So here we go. There’s this. This is the second time Midwest FurFest was targeted.

00:52:37:22 – 00:53:09:00
Nicky Woolf
And it’s not just that. Right. You know, even earlier this year, there was another bomb threat. The furry fandom is often targeted by by this kind of thing. And it is at that intersection where trolling can sometimes spill over into actual violence. Right. And that, I think, is a risk that the it’s quite active all the time. Thank you so much for chatting with me, Patch, for this bonus episode.

00:53:09:00 – 00:53:31:07
Nicky Woolf
Always a pleasure. Hello to viewers on Dogpatch Press. Subscribe to Fur & Loathing wherever you get your podcasts if you’re watching this. And if you’re listening to this as part of the feed, I hope you’re enjoying the show. Don’t forget to leave a review — unless you’re not enjoying the show, in which case, I guess, well done for getting five episodes in anyway.

00:53:31:07 – 00:53:41:11
Nicky Woolf
And yeah, tune in next week for our penultimate episode. We start to close in on some theories.

00:53:42:06 – 00:53:43:01
Patch O’Furr
Thank you so much.

00:53:43:04 – 00:53:44:19
Nicky Woolf
Thank you! As always, a pleasure.

00:53:44:19 – 00:53:55:17
Patch O’Furr
I’m so glad you gave so much time and attention and all of your professionalism and your talent. And yeah, I’m just looking forward to hearing more.

00:53:55:17 – 00:54:14:13
Nicky Woolf
And thank you so much for all your hard work on this story. It’s been fantastic and thank you for staying up so late to chat.

Like the article? These take hard work. For more free furry news, follow on Twitter or support not-for-profit Dogpatch Press on Patreon.Want to get involved? Try these subreddits: r/furrydiscuss for news or r/waginheaven for the best of the community. Or send guest writing here. (Content Policy.)

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Another in the how-did-we-miss-this category: Pooh vs. Bambi, a new 3-issue comic miniseries. “In war there are rules, but the forest has none. Abandoned by his country, betrayed by those he once called family, and hunted by those who want nothing more than to keep him as a trophy, Pooh is on a mission and no amount of honey will sate his thirst—he wants revenge!” One of the creators is Joe Brusha, long-time mainstay at Zenescope Comics, who has a history of bringing us some unusual and often very violent furry stuff. This one is written by Noah Mitchell, with artwork by Jordi Tarragona and Juan Manuel Rodriguez. Check out the reviews over at League of Comic Geeks.

image c. 2024 Zenescope Comics

Cringe – we’ve all used the word, usually to describe someone behaving in an embarrassing or inappropriate manner. But it’s more than just a label – you FEEL cringe viscerally. But what makes us cringe? And are furries inherently at least a bit cringe?

This week, the cast do their best to have a “sensible” conversation about cringe.

This episode was originally livestreamed. See the unedited chaos on our YouTube: S11E3

NOW LISTEN!

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MUSIC

• Intro: RetroSpecter – Cloud Fields (RetroSpecter Mix). USA: Unpublished, 2018. ©2011-2018 Fur What It’s Worth. Based on Fredrik Miller – Cloud Fields (Century Mix). USA: Bandcamp, 2011. ©2011 Fur What It’s Worth
• First Break: The Wellerman by Alexander Nakarada. Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License
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S11E5 – A Sensible Talk About Cringe - Cringe - we've all used the word, usually to describe someone behaving in an embarrassing or inappropriate manner. But it's more than just a label - you FEEL cringe viscerally. But what makes us cringe? And are furri

On Youtube, founder of Altfurry admits it was for “Radicalizing mentally unstable people” — leading to swatting each other — Video below.

Casey “Len Gilbert” Hoerth lives with his parents in Texas, and used to be a freelance financial blogger for mainstream sites. It was the closest thing he had to a real job or creative outlet, despite trying to publish an embarrassing erotic furry Nazi novel called The Furred Reich.

Casey’s fandom for 1940’s Nazi Germany would lead him to fall in love with modern neo-nazis. This fueled his ambition to use furry fandom as a doormat for alt-right hate politics. While supporting friends at the deadly torchlight Unite The Right riot in 2017, Casey gathered fellow trolls in a fringe of hate groups called Altfurry. His plan was to groom new recruits with redpilling for “revenge based guerilla tactics.”

Taking cues from general neo-nazism, Casey would hide behind deniability, and downplay his trolling as fiction and fandom. Meanwhile, he sought alliance with real terrorists. Casey reached out to white supremacists like Christoper “The Crying Nazi” Cantwell and the Patriot Front hate group, and tried to get friends to join the Jan 6 riot at the Capitol. Altfurry would end up linked to criminals while Casey traded prison mail with convicted mass shooters and made video promoting the Midwest Furfest chemical attack suspect.

Casey’s former employers found out and deleted all of his work from their websites.

Without a job or purpose, Casey was left with what he considered kindred spirits in Altfurry. His ambitions amounted to nothing but constant treading water as they failed over and over. He eventually became a truck driver and tried to gain influence by meeting sympathizers on his routes, then by grabbing for control of the defunct Altfurry convention Free Fur All that was ruined by its own membership.

Now, after 7 wasted years, Casey finally admits defeat in the Youtube video quoted below: “I’m done with political furry groups, they’re not what people want, they’re a joke.”

“It was a mistake to build communities for that, all I was doing was radicalizing mentally unstable people, you can take a wild guess how that ends.” 

Casey saw it end with his kindred spirits swatting each other. Still, his nazi-remorse is unrepentant. He’s sad because he failed, not because he grew and changed.

Background of culture war in fandom: The nature of hate groups inside and why they always fail. 

How did furries experience the rise of the alt-right? When a tide rises in the main culture, a bubble of subculture floats with it, but it can also have some independence. Furries have it when creative expression aligns with queer expression on an emotional level. Devoted members grow shared interest, and a lot of them happen to be LGBT. That’s not politics creating difference from the mainstream; it comes from organic feeling, like creative people have in their hearts. They feel who gets along and who doesn’t. This filters out those who don’t.

A fringe of people end up outside the bubble because they don’t get along. That still isn’t politics. It comes from nuisance behavior that tells other people to avoid them until they grow and change, or they choose a new hobby or place to go from the endless choices we all have.

That’s freedom… but some who have it can’t be satisfied, because they lack ability to contribute positively, and envy those who do. This boils down the remaining fringe to malice and grudges, which ferments into trolling and sabotage. That’s how Altfurries exist as enemies to what they consider “politics” against them. Again, this isn’t politics. Nobody asks how you vote to join a fandom. Altfurry is about being creeps and assholes to people who have each other’s backs on an emotional level, and altfurries reek of bad intentions, so people avoid them no matter how they vote.

This isn’t opinion. It’s tested and proven over and over by Altfurry behavior to each other in their own spaces.

Hateful trolls are incapable of getting along or identifying as anything more than enemies to something. Their reason to exist negates any peaceful co-existence they can ever have. It makes a giant blind spot: they are the thing they hate the most. They spend a lot of time complaining about being “canceled,” when they do it to each other in factions full of infighting. They expect loyalty, but don’t give it, because each one is out for themselves.

You can hear about it from one of the people most responsible.

Text notes of Casey Hoerth’s Youtube video — Or watch the video archived in a Telegram channel for receipts of Casey’s Altfurry background.

Quick points to get up to speed on inside topics:

• Casey’s Altfurry faction was for overt alt-right politics, but covertly enabling sex predators — only pretending to oppose them for optics.
• The Furry Raiders faction with Foxler is known for nazi armbands. It’s more covertly alt-right, but overtly pro-predator, vexing Casey’s quest for influence.
• Breaking point: Casey backed Foxler until his support of predator Kero The Wolf finally made Casey disown him long after his predator nature was clear.
• Other competing factions have varying sliders of beliefs, but behind their infighting, it all boils down to malicious intentions.
• “Let Furdom Ring” is another faction run by Viktor, who carried out swatting on a fellow Altfurry, MightyRed.
• Casey and Foxler’s factions were the main rivals for control of the Free Fur All Altfurry convention that died by infighting.
• Magnus Diridian is a Furry Raider, the “Confederate flag fursuiter” at Free Fur All, and the main FBI suspect for the Midwest Furfest chemical attack.

(These notes keep Casey’s Altfurry handle “Len Gilbert”, and were speed-transcribed. Reference video for more detail.)

6:00 Interview starts with the host and Len, and some watchers who comment in chat.

9:00 Len calls himself founder of Altfurry in 2016. He gathered “canceled” people to the group, who chased negative attention as kind of a psy-op.

11:00 Len met Magnus Diridian as one of the “canceled”, then met at Free Fur All (FFA) with all those people for the first time.

12:00 Len says it taught him how to behave properly, and realize he was doing things wrong. Now he doesn’t have anything in common with canceled people who are emotionally disturbed, malformed, cranks, in it for negativity and offending. He thinks it wasn’t even political, they were clinging to that to trigger people. Magnus was top of the offender list, with Foxler, as well as Foxler’s toadie Aeveirra, Crusader Cat, etc.

13:00 Len was going to be Magnus’ fursuit handler, but Magnus ditched him at FFA for Furry Raiders. It hurt him.

14:00 Praising Magnus’ fursuit making, Len used to be a big fan; but Magnus used the suits to piss people off and wasted the talent. “Never meet your heroes”.

15:30 All the other Altfurries ditched their “debate” video, it was supposed to be about the Altfurry fighting for control and the potential of unity.

17:00 Host asks about Furred Reich book. Len: “It was a bit embarrassing, I pulled it and it only exists on Kiwifarms and Dogpatch Press, so if people ask, I assume that’s where they get their info”.

19:00 “It’s no longer a nazi furry erotica book”. Magnus was going to join the video, but couldn’t except for leaving a few comments in chat now.

20:00 Talking about other Altfurries (Riled and Viktor), who hate Len. Viktor runs another Altfurry chat. Len calls him out of control. He obsesses with grudges.

They want to do nothing but to hurt the "other side". They have no reason for being, no purpose, and no goals: only pain.

— Fen (@chemicalcrux) November 6, 2020

23:00 Len blocked Viktor. Host says they want to work with him, but Len says he was bullied, and they have bad policies about canceling people and being vengeful. He says Viktor rants with giant walls of text and it’s a constantly cycling ride. Len got off the ride.

26:00 Len says he’s still upset about Magnus for ditching him at FFA and he’s basically a Furry Raider. He knows Magnus loves hanging out with them because of Foxler’s trolling, both of them live off negative attention, and Foxler toadie Aeveirra is another “sleaze bag”.

27:00 Magnus says he isn’t a Raider, but Len says YES YOU ARE because you hang out with them. Magnus comments: “No they hang out with me”. Len brings up Magnus’ troll fursuit of Lemonade Coyote, a deceased furry who was loved in the fandom, whose character was copied without permission by Magnus, showing how “sick in the head” he is. Len at first believed his excuse that it was an homage. Then Magnus boasted about how much attention he could get with it, if he hung out with Foxler and wore an armband on it.

29:00 Foxler’s toadie Aeveirra posted a photo of Magnus doing that. Len says it was scummy and fuck you.

30:00 Magnus comments “Len didn’t see the other 90% of stuff I did that was positive”.

31:00 Talking about Foxler being a pedo and zoophile – it’s not rumors. Len says he was misguided and excused that stuff before. Len realized what the Raiders really were because of the Kero the Wolf thing. Foxler tried to get Kero into the Raiders. Raiders are a network of pedos and zoos and mentally sick people, and it’s all about offending and not political.

34:00 Another Altfurry, MightyRedWolf in Hawaii, comments in chat with a claim about false charges. Len says “Don’t you think crime records would be posted in public? Bullshit.” Oh wait… Viktor did organize attempted swatting on MightyRedWolf, using a patsy to carry out the scheme.

37:00 He admits Viktor paid the patsy $80 to get dox and call a swat on MightyRedWolf. A cop showed up at Red’s door with a gun drawn, and there’s a video of the swatting somewhere.

39:00 Magnus shares a list of good deeds: Fursuit skit, easter egg hunt, music video.

40:00 Playing Magnus’ FFA performance as “Zombie Lemonade Coyote” and Aeveirra trolling. Len: that was a scumbag thing to do.

43:00 Mocking Magnus for not coming on audio because he can’t explain himself. MightyRed is still rambling about Viktor, and says the swatting was under Len’s watch. Stupid comments about Aeveirra. MightyRed is still accusing Len about dodging the swatting topic. More mocking Magnus.

48:00 Going over the Free Fur All controversy with FFA runners Peacewolf, her ex-husband Foxglove, and Jasonafex who she cucked him with. Len apologized to Peacewolf for trolling her and inflaming her divorce from Foxglove, to split control of the con and grab it back for his faction. The control scheme “devolved” into terrorizing her emotionally. Host calls Peacewolf a whore and sympathizes with Foxglove. In chat comment, Altfurry Astral praises Len for apologizing. Len says to read the Google doc about it.

Tulsa's Free Fur All Fashcon failed because it was made for Nazis, Nazis are toxic to everything including EACH OTHER, and that's NOT POLITICS. New proof: admission of instigating toxicity from inside by Casey "Len Gilbert" Hoerth, the nazi hiding behind @/furryrespector. pic.twitter.com/RDSvOU4bzJ

— Nazifur Receipts (@NazifurReceipts) April 17, 2024

52:30 Len Gilbert and Magnus made a video together in 2018 about Magnus’ ban from Midwest Furfest. Len says he did it to defend Magnus from leftists “framing” Magnus for chlorine bombing the convention in 2014 (he admitted being the FBI’s main suspect). Magnus says he was banned for his Confederate flag fursuit, and Len praises it. Magnus comments: he made the suit because the flag was banned. Magnus pokes Len again about previously condoning his Lemonade Coyote ripoff fursuit. Len says he realized it was trolling when he wore it with Raiders at FFA.

55:00 Comments whining about politics making fandom toxic. MightyRed sent audio of swatting claims, but it’s stupid. A bunch of stupid repetitive comments.

102:00 Viktor Markov’s real name is “Eric.”

105:00 Len thinks Magnus is canceled for seeking attention, but “Magnus hasn’t done anything illegal” (despite admitting he was the FBI’s main suspect in a chemical terror attack.)

107:00 Len thought Altfurries were kindred spirits, but they were anything but and he needed to cut them out of his life. “Bye Magnus”. Other Altfurries want to join forces again to be a “powerhouse”. Len says “we already have worked together”, and it ended with Viktor being vengeful, he doesn’t want a “bathhouse powerhouse.”

112:00 Len: Swatting MightyRed was organized inside Viktor’s chat admin channel. Comment: all the Altfurry drama is a “feedback loop of shit flinging”. Magnus blames Len for having a grudge. Len repeats accusations about Furry Raider pedos and trolling. They play the video Len made with Magnus in 2018 to defend him from being “framed” for the Midwest Furfest attack. Magnus denies seeing anything wrong with the Raiders, after Len denied there could be anything illegal about Magnus.

117:00 Altfurry Astral challenges Len to prove the Raiders are all pedos. Len says “he’s peeing on my leg and telling me it’s raining.” Magnus repeats more defenses.

120:00 They want Altfurry Dojo Dingo back. A comment complains about Dojo being bullied out of fandom. Astral denies being a Raider. Len calls them cockroaches and says they all deny it while rooming together, fucking each other, and playing semantics games.

122:00 FFA is dead. Len will never go again. He will go to other conventions like TFF in Texas.

123:00 Astral denies getting pedophilic cub art. Len mocks all of them for hanging out with Raiders cub lovers and being disgusting, and mocks Astral and Magnus for excusing it. “Fuckers, what’s the matter with these people?” Magnus complains about guilt by association. Len: “They cling to it, play games, it’s a cub porn zoophile group, you’re gross and nasty and stupid to be in it”. Magnus comments “You can’t tell me who I hang out with, I even roomed with Carpet Sample, and had Kage at my house.” Astral says cub porn is everywhere, Len mocks him for excusing it.

129:00 Chat comment by Panda of FFA: “It’s not guilt by association. It just shows you’re a gross person with poor standards.” Len: “Thank you.”

130:00 Len: “I don’t really hang out in political chats any more, I’m not interested in working with political channels, it was a mistake to build communities for that. All I was doing was radicalizing mentally unstable people, you can take a wild guess how that ends. I moved on after Viktor wanted to call relatives of mine, like he did to MightyRed. I want to move on with life and be a normal person.” – Now Len goes to real events and runs his drama channel and “wholesome hangout”. He tells Magnus to use his fursuit making talent, and stop being a mental case out for attention. Final word to Viktor: “I know who you are and where you live, do not ever talk to me again.” “I admire anyone who gets off their ass and makes content, a lot of furries on this side of the fandom just bitch and complain.” He complains about people calling his relatives and siblings.

135:00 Len: “I’m done with political furry groups, they’re not what people want, they’re a joke.”

From the horse’s mouth

Have you ever seen such cognitive dissonance from creepy nuisances judging each other’s offenses? They’re so close, but so far from self-realization.

Casey Hoerth hates how his constant nuisance behavior dragged his family into the drama he started. Actually, time and again, that’s the #1 way to neutralize malicious schemers. Often it doesn’t even require getting the attention of uninvolved people. It’s built in to their relationships. The last straw for Free Fur All was a divorce and cheating/cuckolding breakup. They always kneecap themselves… always.

You never, ever have to tolerate malicious people. Let their own words seal the permanent truth behind the phrase “nazifurs fuck off!”

Casey is now pushing the umpteenth iteration of Altfurry by baiting followers with drama stories and sugar coating his activity as “wholesome”.

I don’t expect the above article to go far not because it’s not deserved or well written but because outside of the current group he’s fused to like a needy lamprey desperate for validation he’s just a middle aged nobody. (And as a middle aged nobody game recognize game.)

— holding leftovers (@technicolorpie) June 5, 2024

Beware of scheming Nazis who are constantly rebranding and seeking new ways to grab clout and recruits. If you see Casey's Nazi agenda laundered through his 1000th rebrands as "wholesome" or "furry drama news", refer to this thread or the long trail of receipts to see through it. pic.twitter.com/l4VmGl67C0

— Nazifur Receipts (@NazifurReceipts) April 17, 2024

Like the article? These take hard work. For more free furry news, follow on Twitter or support not-for-profit Dogpatch Press on Patreon.Want to get involved? Try these subreddits: r/furrydiscuss for news or r/waginheaven for the best of the community. Or send guest writing here. (Content Policy.)

Welcome to my Retro Nintendo Series, where I look at old Nintendo games and try to review them. Starting of course with the Nintendo Entertainment System(NES).

[Papabear Note: This is going to be my first in a two-part editorial/correspondence regarding the accusations often levied against furries. Traditionally, furries go on the defensive when faced with such criticism. Well, it's time to go on offense (at the risk of being offensive!)]

Dear Papabear,

I have a problem.

To start off, I found the Furry fandom about 8 months back when I was aimlessly skipping around the Internet. It just popped up in front of me, I looked it up, and … I fell in love with it. To me, the idea of furry was this perfect blend of imagination and wonder — something I’d always loved and, unknown to me at the time, always found refuge in. It turned my world on its ear to know that there were people out there that like this ‘outlandish’ concept as much as I do. But now, I’m scared.

You see, I want to tell people I know about this, but I’m terrified of being judged. I am one of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and, with how the fandom’s portrayed, I don’t know if people will believe me or what they hear. I know I need to tell my parents (who are Jehovah’s Witnesses, too), yet I’m scared of what they will do. I love my parents, and I don’t want to hurt them by getting involved in something that they’ll believe will hurt me, but I don’t want to lose it. It’s been such a big part of me for as long as I can remember, and I don’t want to have to throw it all away — I love it. I’ve read how you responded to a similar situation, but it’s more than that.

I have not been in my right mind for a long time now. I suffer from depression and some form or another of mental instability. It’s terrible and tears me in half, but furry helps.  I don’t feel so horrid if I think about something furry or saw something furry earlier that day. I (for the most part) feel better than I have in a long time, but I can’t tell my father that furry things help me, he won’t accept it. (He’s not the kind to believe in something that isn’t quite traditional.) I don’t have any friends and it is hard to talk to people, but there, too, furry helps me.

So, above all, how do I show my parents all the good things that being a furry does for me without them thinking that I’m going astray morally or spiritually?

Uncertainly,
Rusty K. (age 16)

* * *

Dear Rusty,

Typically, when I receive a letter such as yours about being scared to tell parents one is a furry, it is because said parents are religious. The more religious they are, the worse it is, with the most problematic sects being Evangelicals, Southern Baptists (Baptists and Evangelicals being pretty much the same, but not all Evangelicals are Baptists by any means), and, lately, Jehovah Witnesses. I also get letters from Middle Eastern furries on occasion, and it's pretty safe to assume (though they usually don't mention it) that their parents are Muslims.

Lately, I have received several letters from kids whose parents are Jehovah's Witnesses. Because their parents are JW's, they say they are too, which is typical for that young age to simply follow your parents' examples. On the spectrum of conservative-to-liberal religious denominations, JW's are on the very conservative side (FYI, the more liberal religions and denominations include Unitarian Universalists, Reformed Jews, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterians, Methodists, and United Church of Christ). In addition to Reformed and Conservative Judaism, the more liberal non-Christian religions are Wicca (definitely), Buddhists (although technically more a philosophy than a religion), and Baha'i (socially liberal but morally conservative). Wicca, by the way, is the fastest growing religion in the United States :)

Politically and/or religiously conservative people such as your parents typically pick out bad examples in the fandom and then generalize those bad examples to "prove" that all furries are bad. They also pick up on false news (e.g., the completely false rumor started by Republicans for political reasons that furries demand cat litter boxes in school bathrooms) and believe it as if it were Gospel.

What you're likely afraid of is that you will tell your Jehovah's Witness parents you are a furry, then they will go online, discover negative stories, and then lose their love or respect for you. You usually see stuff like "furries are pedos or zoophiles" or that they "want to be animals" (well, many do identify with animals, but that is too complicated phenomenon to explain adequately here).

None of that is really true. Are there pedos in the fandom? Are there zoos? Yes and yes. But they are not the norm and there are more pedos and zoos in the general population than in the fandom. What happens is that conservatives seek bad actors within the fandom and say that they are examples of what the fandom is all about. This is called "the hasty generalization fallacy" and is the argument that most furry haters make.

I can do the same thing to a Jehovah's Witness.

A quick google results in these stories about Jehovah's Witnesses and child abuse:

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/jehovahs-witnesses-face-child-sex-abuse-investigation-in-australia/2015/08/14/d8a58eda-406e-11e5-9561-4b3dc93e3b9a_story.html
• https://www.wtaj.com/news/regional-news/former-cambria-county-man-others-charged-in-sex-abuse-of-19-children-ag-shapiro-announced/
• https://www.levylaw.com/jehovah-s-witness-sex-abuse-lawsuits/
• There are many more of these stories, but I'm not going to list them all. Just google "Jehovah's Witnesses child abuse" and you'll get a lot of search results.

Not only are there multiple cases of child abuse, but Jehovah's Witnesses have been accused of covering it up multiple times (similar to the Catholic Church covering up pedophilia among their priests). According to a Wikipedia article:

In some cases, members of Jehovah's Witnesses have been prevented or deterred from reporting child molestation to civil authorities. Particularly since around 2000, the Jehovah's Witnesses organization has been accused of covering up cases of child molestation committed by its members. In March 2001, Christianity Today printed an article reporting allegations that Jehovah's Witnesses' policies made reporting sexual abuse difficult for members, and did not conform to typical treatment of such cases. The article also included a response by representatives of Jehovah's Witnesses. The Australian Royal Commission heard that an elder discouraged an abuse victim from going to the Commission by saying, "Do you really want to drag Jehovah's name through the mud?" In Ireland in 2016, two Jehovah's Witness elders were removed from their positions as punishment for reporting a child molester to the police after the London Branch legal department told them not to.

The BBC reported allegations of a cover-up in July 2002, in an episode of Panorama entitled "Suffer the Little Children." The report revealed that the headquarters of Jehovah's Witnesses, the Watch Tower Society, requires all congregations to submit details of child abuse allegations and maintains an internal database on all cases of child abuse reported to them. It described one case where a child came forward to the elders of her congregation to report sexual abuse by her father, but was sent home, despite their having known for three years that her father was an abuser. When the girl eventually went to the police, her father was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.

According to Witness spokesman J. R. Brown, Jehovah's Witnesses are not required to report crimes to elders before calling civil authorities. Victims and their families are free to call police, he said, although some don't choose to. The Watch Tower Society maintains a policy with no explicit requirement for elders to report all child abuse cases where such is not required by law. Elders are instructed to "leave matters in Jehovah's hands" if an abuser denies the accusations and there is no second witness available

​​The point is that if a Jehovah's Witness declares furries are zoos and immoral and gives one or two examples, it is very simple to give LOTS of examples of JWs being immoral. This can be done on an individual basis, too.

For example, there's this guy on YouTube named Richard Lorenzo Jr., a self-declared Jehovah's Witness, who posted this video called "The Shocking Dark Truth about the Furry Community" in which he says we are zoos and that we are trying to "convert" children to the dark immoral side. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjjCBk-F1bA&t=400s What he does is take one video clip of one furry confessing they are a zoo. If you continue to watch the rather lengthy video, you'll see how he tries to take advantage of vulnerable teens and convince them to convert to Christianity. This is a typical ploy among proselytizers.

So, what can we do about that? Well, a 3-minute search on Mr. Lorenzo gives us this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=014rUVupyAU about what a fraud he is.

You can literally find stuff about almost anyone or anything online to trash people and groups. Doesn't mean those people or groups are sinners, agents of evil, immoral, or criminals. I am going to say right here and now that I have no clue whether or not Richard Lorenzo Jr. is a good or a bad man. And I will also go out on a limb and say most Jehovah's Witnesses are probably good people (same with Catholics or any other group of people). The point is not to make broad generalizations about anyone based on a bloody google search. That's stupid. Same with the "I heard it on the internet" or "someone told me this in a chat room."

Non-furries need to do likewise. Don't judge furries based on some garbage people are spreading online. I have been in this furry community for decades, and I can tell you that it is filled with wonderful people. The furry fandom is what you make of it. You can embrace it and love it, or you can trash it and use bad publicity to make money on your YouTube channel or get political contributions from ignorant parents of school children.

Your choice.

I apologize, Rusty, for using your letter to get on my soapbox and make a speech, but it needed saying.

Okay, so that addresses the fear your parents may have that being in the community will hurt you. To continue, as you noted yourself, the furry community can actually help you. Time and time again, furries have told me how being a furry has given them more confidence, has helped them to socialize, and has made them many friends. I'm one of them. There are actually studies, too, that being a furry helps people with who are on the autism spectrum. And being a furry helps you to explore yourself as a person by giving you the freedom and inspiration to try new things. I talk some about the benefits in my fairly recent article that was also written to a Jehovah's Witness.

Furry, as you attest yourself, makes you happy, and that is a good thing! It can help you make friends (also a good thing), help you with anxiety and depression, and also inspire creativity and imagination. Furries are also givers. They donate tens of thousands of dollars every year to charities (mostly through donations to sponsor charities at conventions). They also contribute to the economy (for example, big conventions like Anthrocon in Pittsburgh result in micro-booms in the local economy). 

There is nothing immoral about furry. There is even a Christian Furry group you can join if interested (and there are a couple of Christian groups on Telegram). I think it would be a good idea for you to contact one of those groups and ask them for a little help on discussing furry with your parents.

Is being a furry different and unconventional? Yes, of course! That's what makes it exciting and fun, and there is certainly nothing wrong with that. Your father, especially, needs to get over his fear of people who are not ordinary. Remember, it is not the ordinary people who make a difference in the world.

Dare to be extraordinary.

Hope this helps!
Papabear​​

One of the surprise hits at this year’s Cannes Film Festival was an animated film called Flow. It’s a CGI feature written and directed by Gints Zilbalodis, which features no humans and no dialogue. The synopsis goes like this: “The world seems to be coming to an end, teeming with the vestiges of a human presence. Cat is a solitary animal, but as his home is devastated by a great flood, he finds refuge on a boat populated by various species, and will have to team up with them despite their differences. In the lonesome boat sailing through mystical overflowed landscapes, they navigate the challenges and dangers of adapting to this new world.” And now, Cartoon Brew have let us know that Sideshow Pictures and Janus films have picked up Flow for distribution in North America.

image c. 2024 Sideshow / Janus Films

Welcome to "Fresh Fur!" Our weekly installment going over the newest game releases, and which ones you can expect to find anthros/furries in!

Check the list below for all the games we could find with animal/anthro influences and characters.

New Releases for the week of May 27-June 2, 2024:

• JustAxe (PC) - May 27
• The Rogue Prince of Persia (PC early access) - May 27
• Ultimate Godspeed (PC) - May 27
• Seed of Life (PS5) - May 27
• Cupid Parasite: Sweet and Spicy Darling (Switch) - May 28
• MultiVersus (PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC) - May 28
• Old World (PC) - May 28
• Reus 2 (PC) - May 28
• Capes (PS5) - May 29
• Nine Sols (PC, PS4, PS5, Switch) — May 29
• Madzik (PC) - May 30
• Astor: Blade of the Monolith (PS5, PS4) - May 30
• Horizon Chase 2 (PS5) - May 30
• Potion Permit: Complete Edition (PS5, PS4) - May 30
• Umbraclaw (PS5, PS4) - May 30
• Skald: Against the Black Priory (PC) - May 30
• Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip (PC) - May 30
• F1 24 (PS5, PS4) - May 31
• Skeler Boy (PS5, PS4) - May 31

*Bolded games have furry/animal influences/characters

Furry & Animal Indie Steam Game Finds:

These games were found in the New Releases section of Steam this week and will be updated as more come out throughout the week!

Digital Cybercherries is small development team who clearly had a vision for their product. Unfortunately, outside of its premise, Hypercharge: Unboxed really doesn’t do anything to make it stand out from the crowd.

It's a good time to be a PlayStation fan. Sony has their Days of Play celebration which includes sales, specials, and is currently happening. Their State of Play which premiered on 5/30/24 sadly didn’t have much in the way of Furry related titles(Thank you Daxel for letting me know). That said, there’s still plenty for gaming furs to appreciate. 

Sly Cooper the Thievious Racoonis, the first game in the Sly Cooper series, is being added to the PS2 classics catalog for Plus members on June 11. 

Additionally, a number of games have gone on sale! Until 6/12, a selection of premium titles can be found for good prices. Including several Jackbox party packs and bundles.

Notable games such as: 

• Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 $49.69($69.99) 
• Jedi: Fallen Order $9.99($39.99)
• It Takes Two $11.99($39.99) for both PS4 and 5

Games of furry interest include:

• God of War Ragnarok $39.89($69.99) - PS5($29.99 instead of $59.99 on PS4)
• ARK: Survival Ascended $35.99($44.99)
• Mortal Kombat 1 $27.99 for Premium($69.99)
• Diablo IV Standard $34.99($69.99)
• Monster Hunter World & Rise $9.99 ea($19.99 for World, $39.99 for Rise. Expansions available for extra)
• Skyrim Anniversary Edition $16.49($49.99)
• theHunter: Call of the Wild $7.49($29.99)
• Bluey: The Videogame $31.99($39.99) 
• Overcooked: All you can eat $15.99($39.99)
• Smalland: Survive the Wilds $23.44($34.99)
• Stellaris Console Edition $17.99($59.99)
• TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge Dimension Shellshock $5.99($7.99)
• Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy $14.99($59.99)
• PAW Patrol World $27.99($39.99)
• PAW Patrol: Grand Prix $17.99($29.99)
• Unicorn Overlord Monarch Edition $52.99($69.99)
• PAW Patrol Mighty Pups Save Adventure Bay $14.99($29.99)
• Gigantosaurus the Game $12.49($24.99)
• Toss! $11.99($19.99) 
• The Longest Road on Earth $4.99($9.99)

And MANY more! Happy shopping!

MOOBARKFLUFF! Click here to send us a comment or message about the show!

Come join Bearly and Taebyn as they visit with Flecko the Fennec.  Flecko is a self sufficient furry who lives off the grid.  We talk about how he chose this life, how it affects him, and learn about becoming one with nature.  

This podcast contains adult language and adult topics. It is rated M for Mature. Listener discretion is advised.

Support the show

Thanks to all our listeners and to our staff: Bearly Normal, Rayne Raccoon, Taebyn, Cheetaro, TickTock, and Ziggy the Meme Weasel.

You can send us a message on Telegram at BFFT Chat, or via email at: bearlyfurcasting@gmail.com

Special Episode - Spotlight on Flecko the Fennec

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom released on May 12, 2023, almost a year ago as of the time of this writing. And before it, Breath of the Wild on March 3, 2017. Both games released to major acclaim and both have left their marks on gaming history. Yet, Tears of the Kingdom ultimately didn’t have the same impact as its predecessor.

以茶會毛工作團隊在4月13、14兩日，於高雄市立圖書館總館辦理《以茶會毛2024冒險盛宴》，共有1096位報名參加，也是目前台灣首次在圖書館舉辦獸文化相關活動的首例。本次活動亦與高雄市世界圖書日活動合作，據高雄市立圖書館方統計，共有25307人次到場。

本次活動共有349隻毛毛到場出席。 圖／以茶會毛攝影師 企鵝

本次活動主題以冒險者RPG為出發點，而主辦單位在總館一樓廣場設置許多委託單，讓參加者能夠領取任務累積積分拚取各職業的第一名，以獲得特殊稱號和獎盃。同時，官方與高雄捷運、Larp宗親會團隊、練弓房 射箭空間等多個單位合作，讓參加者們更加投入本次主題之餘，可以到各地點去解任務並實際支持這些團隊。

活動合作單位之一的練弓房，提供參加者射箭體驗。圖／沃斯特 提供

本次活動將以往不對外開放的舞台活動與販售場設置在一樓的廣場，讓一般民眾也能現場觀看由參加者們帶來的表演，以及購買創作者們提供的各式商品。除此之外，以茶會毛官方也在活動前與高雄市立圖書館總館共同舉辦伴讀活動，讓毛毛們跟小朋友一起閱讀繪本，進而推廣毛毛文化。

販售場有許多種類商品，圖為繪師天犬正在繪製簽繪板。圖／藍風攝

講座部分除了邀請導盲犬協會宣傳導盲犬的事情外，今年更邀請資深繪師兼獸裝扮演者B.Cat分享關於接觸毛毛這十年來的經驗，吸引許多人在台前聆聽。

今年導盲犬協會也在台上演講，並讓參加者上台體驗。圖／伊爾攝

對於本次活動更改舉辦場地的決定，主辦人冰羽貓在受訪時表示，由於原先合作飯店方出現一些問題，為了讓參加者能有更好的活動體驗，因此在多方地點視察後，認為圖書館總館腹地寬廣，並且周遭有可以住宿的地方，才定案在此進行本屆活動。

主辦表示一樓廣場空間足夠容納多人，可進行舞台與販售會等活動。圖／藍風攝

冰羽貓也表示，以茶會毛跟其他獸文化活動如獸無限、FurMIT最大的不同，就是以茶會毛是以「毛場」為主要核心，希望參加者跟毛毛們能在公眾場合下與民眾交流，並向大眾推廣獸文化。

圖為毛毛天墨與小女孩抱抱的畫面。圖／藍風攝

對於活動部分，參加者巧克布表示對於本次咖啡廳的活動與食物感到滿意，不過販售會的場地狹小表示會影響到動線；參加者辣辣也表示販售會的攤位較少，也認為開幕入場流程有需要改善。

本次咖啡廳由獅小波、湯包等人負責製作餐點。圖／藍風攝 本次提供的餐點照。圖／藍風攝

對於本次活動發生如工作人員不足、部分活動細節不完美等問題，冰羽貓受訪時表示，由於臨時更換地點，導致活動籌備時間只有大約三個月的時間，因此在活動流程只能盡力去重新規劃，讓活動能順利推出。而對於市長來訪，冰羽貓也表示收到此消息是在活動前三天，因此也是緊急跟相關人員和高雄市圖書總館進行協調，才能讓活動能順利進行。

團隊Wannabeast在毛毛捷運活動表演前舞台旁舉著旗幟。圖／藍風攝

活動閉幕式的最後，以茶會毛團隊也公布2025年的活動主題為《百毛夜行》，針對訂定這個主題的原因，冰羽貓表示主題發想是源於日本古代百鬼夜行的故事。內容提到妖怪和人類生活的地方，其實是相互重疊的，只是人類是在白天活動，而妖怪們則是在晚上活動，到了某天妖怪們聚集在一起行動進而變成大規模夜間遊行。百毛夜行也代表著毛毛其實跟日常生活也是重疊的，大家都各自生活，而屆時在以茶會毛2025-百毛夜行之日，希望讓百毛們聚集到高雄進行夜晚的大遊行，就是這個主題的主軸。