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Dogs wagging their tongues

Fursday - Reading List - Fri 15 Nov 2013 - 20:24

Ty’s idea for the project formed back in March of 2012 when he was shooting a project for a client. “While running through all the images that were shot I would find myself laughing out loud at how great the expressions were that some of the dogs had while licking in studio. The best way to describe it would be an ‘a-ha’ moment, I just kept thinking to myself, ‘this would be a great book!’”

Unlike most of us, dogs don’t have too much tongue licking their own noses.

Ty Foster's Lick Gallery

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Categories: News

CODA5.1 - Rrowdybeast aka. Fenrir - **This is Episode 46 of the entire Fuzzy Notes catalogue! CRAZY!** THIS EPISODE CONTAINS EXPLI...

Fuzzy Notes - Fri 15 Nov 2013 - 18:16
**This is Episode 46 of the entire Fuzzy Notes catalogue! CRAZY!** THIS EPISODE CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE! 'Coda' is a the super-smart and talkative member of the Fuzzy Notes family of podcasts about the music made by furries. Where Fuzzy Notes features music, and B-Sides showcases additional tracks by previously featured artists, Coda is an interview show where Roo chats with furry songwriters, producers and musicians about their recent projects, their musical life, and everything in between! In 'Coda5.1' Roo talks to the Rrowdybeast, a furry artist and producer who continues the tradition of looking at music in a unique way by blending visual art and music. This is part of a FOUR HOUR conversation we had awhile back, and will be split into multiple episodes. In this episode he talks about confidence, the connection between art and music in the furry universe, and building musical skill. Rrowdybeast is passionate about art, music and has some strong opinions about how it all fits in the furry fandom. This is definitely an inspiring conversation...and there's more to come. RROWDYBEAST ONLINE: Twitter: http://twitter.com/rrowdybeast FA: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/rrowdybeast/ MUSIC: Opening Coda Theme: The Grass Is Soothing (R.D.L.G. Remix) https://soundcloud.com/redd-sound/roo-the-grass-is-soothing-r-d DMAshura - Diamond Dust Track: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1399067/ FA: http://furaffinity.net/user/DMashura Demiloup - Zero One Theme Track: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/11160238/ FA: http://furaffinity.net/user/demiloup Ghar - draigun feat. kid whatever - crazy fire Track: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2798745/ FA: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/ghar/ FIND FUZZY NOTES ONLINE: Twitter: http://twitter.com/Potoroo Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FuzzyNotes iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id581600769 Email: fuzzynotespodcast@gmail.com PLEASE RATE AND REVIEW FUZZY NOTES! Your (hopefully positive!) review will help Fuzzy Notes find a wider audience and is VER appreciated! Here, have a <3 just for reading this! CODA5.1 - Rrowdybeast aka. Fenrir - **This is Episode 46 of the entire Fuzzy Notes catalogue! CRAZY!** THIS EPISODE CONTAINS EXPLI...
Categories: Podcasts

Hai There!

Furry Reddit - Fri 15 Nov 2013 - 18:11
Categories: News

I made dis! Chibi foxes, anyone?

Furry Reddit - Fri 15 Nov 2013 - 16:10
Categories: News

Villains vs. Turtles

Furry News Network - Fri 15 Nov 2013 - 14:05
Author: rodney Among the many Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles projects coming out of IDW Publishing this year was a mini-series simply called Villains. Now, they’ve collected the first four stories from this full-color series into a new trade paperback, wordily titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Villain Micro-Series Volume 1. Here’s their summary: “Krang, Baxter Stockman, […]
Categories: News

XAN RAMBLES: Fursuiting

Furry Reddit - Fri 15 Nov 2013 - 14:01
Categories: News

Making Miracles

[adjective][species] - Fri 15 Nov 2013 - 14:00

Special Note: This column was first written for TSAT Magazine in 2001 (on September 9th actually, if memory serves). TSAT was an early e-zine that focused entirely on transformation stories, that branch of fiction in which one thing is likely to very soon become another. All of my own earliest works as a serious authors were transformation stories and many of them still are, as I find TF to be a superb literary mechanism for examining the human condition via making it somewhat less human. At any rate, I’ve received several requests over the years to republish this column despite its age in a more available forum, and so I’ve touched it up for [adjective][species]. Please note that while the column refers specifically to transformation stories again and again, I believe that what I said over a decade ago still pretty much holds equally true for furry fiction today.

(So why didn’t I just edit the thing radically enough to make it about furry fiction instead of TF? Because for some unknown reason I’m inordinately proud of this piece, and feel that I owe it to both TSAT Magazine and the struggling beginner writer that I then was to keep it in as original a state as possible. Don’t worry; it’ll be just fine.)

Last Labor Day weekend I found myself standing in a hotel parking lot in Memphis, Tennessee with a group of close friends. It was about midnight and this particular hotel was located directly under the approach path of the local airport. It’d been raining off and on for some time, and the clouds hung low and thick.

As it happens Memphis is the home base of Federal Express, the famous overnight parcel delivery service. Chatting quietly and companionably, we stood together and watched in quiet awe as a miracle took place right in front of our eyes. One after another, a seemingly endless line of heavy cargo jets materialized out of the gloom and glided over our heads, their engines throttled back to a near-silent idle and tiny wisps of fog forming at their wingtips in the heavy humidity. Each jet, weighing many tons, passed directly over our heads as if suspended from a dream and then vanished behind the hotel building as it went on to land in a nightly ballet that may very well have no direct parallel anywhere in the world today. What we were watching was not just a series of planes landing, but a multi-dimensional ballet involving hopes, dreams, thousands of years of steady technological advance and even the expression of social and financial systems evolved to a sufficiently high level to allow such a remarkable thing to take place. It was, in a word, incredible.

So, you may well ask, what does FedEx have to with to do with writing transformation stories? The key phrase in the above paragraph is “a miracle took place right before our eyes”.

As a rule there are four basic transformational devices used in TF literature. These are surgical, magical, technological and biological. Magical TF’s can be as unlimited as a writer’s imagination, while surgical TF’s are almost entirely confined to TG stories. Biological TF’s, as epitomized by the well-known “Martian Flu” of the “Blind Pig” storyverse, generally operate under the guise of contagious diseases. Technological TF’s, however, are far more complex and difficult to work with. Creating a technological TF device demands not only that the writer at least deal in passing with the incredibly complex issues of bio-engineering, but also that he seamlessly place these issues within the context of the society that produced such tech. When a writer attempts to write a story with technological TF’s, in other words, he has by definition set out to write a work of science fiction rather than one of fantasy; therefore, in order to produce a credible work he simply must meet the very exacting strictures of a good SF tale. This requires discipline, discipline, discipline! However, the results can exceed in scope and impact any other form of artistic expression on the planet, at least in my opinion.

Genuinely superb SF is in my opinion rarer than hen’s teeth; the vast majority of what I find on the shelves for sale today in fact makes me want to gag. While there seemingly have been almost as many articles written on the elements of good SF as there have been truly excellent SF tales, and many of these articles make excellent points, I have yet to read any of these “authoritative” pieces that really hits the nail on the head regarding the factor that produces quality work of the sort that transcends the boundary between simple storytelling and true art. And that boundary is that the story must make a miracle, a real, genuine, honest-to-God miracle, take place right in front of your eyes.

This is one hell of a challenge for any writer, of course. Ninety-nine or more percent of all SF consists of the simple rehash of old ideas or plots that have been done a million times before. Yet the truly great ones have managed it—from time to time the impossible has been accomplished and the reader led gently forth to touch the living face of God. Heinlein did it in Orphans of the Sky, the very first and original tale about a generation ship lost in space so long that its inhabitants have forgotten they are space travelers. “The universe was three miles long!” declares the blurb on a paperback edition of this work that I own, and for once the blurb-writer captured the inherent truth of the novel. The universe was only three miles long for the travelers because the inhabitants had turned inwards to superstition and violence instead of outwards towards science and reason. Their universe literally shrank to nothing as their minds closed, and when the viewpoint character finally rejects his religion and looks out upon the naked stars in all their majesty… There simply is no more powerful use of metaphor in all of SF. None!

Arthur C. Clarke has taken his readers to see God as well, not once but many times. Perhaps my personal favorite is the story of Alvin of Lorraine in the classic Against the Fall of Night. Alvin lives in a world where humanity is in serious cultural decline, where risk-taking and exploration and even the mere idea of there being anything new or worthwhile to be found in the universe is unheard of. He explores the glory of Man’s past and rediscovers a heritage that reaches far beyond the mundane boundaries of the minds of his people. (Clarke later rewrote and expanded this novel as The City and The Stars, but I’ve always preferred the plainer and less embellished original version.)

Another more modern writer who’s taken me to unexplored heights is Greg Bear. His Anvil of Stars (sequel to the also-excellent Forge of God) is possibly the single most depressing work I’ve ever read in my life, yet it is glorious and miraculous nonetheless. It’s the tale of a group of children sent forth in an alien-provided starship to avenge themselves upon a civilization that has utterly destroyed Earth and almost all of mankind. Their society’s whole purpose for existence is to seek out and kill these evil beings, and as they get closer and closer to their goal their interpersonal relationships warp more and more out of true until we find ourselves utterly repulsed by the mindless hatred and bloodlust of a tribe of revenge-seeking savages and, even worse, recognizing our own reflections much too clearly in their world. In the end it becomes clear that in order to put paid to the murderers of Earth (who’ve killed many other worlds besides ours and will continue to exterminate entire planets full of sentient beings until stopped), several idyllic and totally innocent races must be also exterminated along the way. There is simply no other option. Among all the peoples and civilizations who have faced this dilemma, guess who alone is bloodthirsty and heartless enough to do what is needful and end the cycle of death forever?

Most articles about writing in general, including those about writing SF, tend to focus on the craftsmanship aspects of writing. Don’t repeat words too often, they tell you. Show, don’t tell. Use good grammar, and remember always that the all-powerful and all-knowing Bill Gates put a spellchecker on your computer for a reason. But what they don’t tell you is that to truly transcend the limits of reality in your reader’s mind, you must find and develop a core idea so powerful that it is analogous to plugging a thirty-amp lead into God himself. Even more, your execution of this idea must be in harmonious sympathy with the concept so that your symbols sing and your metaphors match the greater flow of the tale. I would submit that the technological approach to transformation gives you far and away the greatest opportunity to make this happen, though I couldn’t for the life of me tell you why I think this is so. Perhaps it’s that the discipline of thought required by the writing of true SF as opposed to fantasy brings about a pleasing sense of synchronicity on a subconscious level, or maybe when writing about advanced tech we simply have to plan our works better and more carefully. But it’s true nonetheless, at least in my experience. Almost without exception, every TF story I have ever read that could properly be described as being “high art” rather than simple storytelling has been solidly based upon the thoughtful use of a technological-type TF.

So here’s my challenge to you, my fellow authors. Make me feel the same way that I felt while watching those spectral planes wafting so effortlessly overhead in Memphis, and I will gladly read your works of fiction forevermore. Make a miracle happen in front of my very eyes, and I will be your slobbering fanboy from now until the end of time. For there was something far more magical than mere magic about those planes lined up so endlessly, a sight that even a few short decades ago was absolutely unimaginable and which would have been regarded as the purest of science fiction. TF tech is inherently no more impossible nor unbelievable, I would submit, than Federal Express. Technology is perhaps the most quintessentially human thing in all of the universe, the aspect of ourselves that most clearly defines us as a species. Nothing based in mere material reality is more clearly proof of who and what we are deep down inside than is our tech. I challenge you to take the concept of technology and run wild with it, to wrestle with this most difficult and most rewarding of TF story types and write a true science-fiction-type TF story with all the discipline and limitations that this style of work implies. After all, you never know. In stylistic limitations you may find true freedom, and in the attempting of something truly difficult you may discover inner resources that you never even suspected you had.

Who knows? You might just make a miracle happen.

ERMAHGERD, PS FURRRRR

Furry Reddit - Fri 15 Nov 2013 - 12:20
Categories: News

Favourite plushie?

Furry Reddit - Fri 15 Nov 2013 - 10:56

I'm thinking of getting a cute fox or wolf plushie, something that's really soft and huggable. What's your favourite plushie? Pics/links would be great. Even if it's not as fox or wolf, I just love pics of cute plushes in general ~

submitted by SSoSAGTiCaGwaP
[link] [18 comments]
Categories: News

Storytime, you magnificent bastards!

Furry Reddit - Fri 15 Nov 2013 - 09:31

Who's your fursona, and what's his/her story? Mine is in the comments.

Edit: Keep the answers coming, more = better! And thank you to all of the ones who have replied already!

Magic edit: This post is far from finished. Keep 'em coming!

Super duper edit: Look at the amount of comments. God DAMN you make me proud.

submitted by jamespond62
[link] [177 comments]
Categories: News

Villains vs. Turtles

In-Fur-Nation - Thu 14 Nov 2013 - 23:22

Among the many Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles projects coming out of IDW Publishing this year was a mini-series simply called Villains. Now, they’ve collected the first four stories from this full-color series into a new trade paperback, wordily titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Villain Micro-Series Volume 1. Here’s their summary: “Krang, Baxter Stockman, Old Hob, and Alopex all get their turn. Krang’s history is revealed, Baxter’s secret project may be more dangerous than he realized, Old Hob is ready to branch out on his own, and Alopex discovers a devastating truth about her past.” Hey, how ’bout that? Two furries and an alien have the human out-numbered! Check out the extensive preview at the Comixverse.

image c. 2013 IDW Publishing

Categories: News