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That New Rabbit is Strange…

In-Fur-Nation - Mon 15 Jul 2013 - 19:07

Cantrip The Magic Rabbit is an on-line “anthropomorphic comedy” black & white comic created by “the popular Furrlough duo of Shon Howell and Phil Gibson” (according to the publishers). Here’s the description: “Strange things are happening in Templarsville, Oklahoma. The students at Julius Schwartz Memorial High are abuzz about the new girl, Candice Tripp. They say there’s something unusual about her, possibly unnatural. Of course, the fact that she was discovered in an abandoned house outside of town with complete amnesia lends itself well to these types of fanciful imagination. With her new friends, Candice will learn what it’s like to live in a normal town, until her very un-normal past comes back to haunt her!” Now Radio Comix are releasing the collected Cantrip The Magic Rabbit as a softcover graphic novel next month. You can find out more about it at Second Ed.

image c. 2013 Radio Comix

Categories: News

TigerTails Radio Season 7 Episode 35

TigerTails Radio - Mon 15 Jul 2013 - 16:28
TigerTails Radio Season 7 Episode 35
TigerTails Radio Season 7 Episode 35 From: TigerTails Radio Views: 0 1 ratings Time: 02:14:35 More in Entertainment
Categories: Podcasts

Furry guilds in Defiance

Furry Reddit - Mon 15 Jul 2013 - 15:17

hey guys, does anyone know if there are any furry guilds in the new game defiance?
thanks!

submitted by MercenaryZ93
[link] [comment]
Categories: News

my go at drawing furrys!

Furry Reddit - Mon 15 Jul 2013 - 15:08
Categories: News

Explination to peers

Furry Reddit - Mon 15 Jul 2013 - 14:56

Hello r/furry! Recently, I have accepted myself as a furry after many years of denial, and decided to share it with my friends. While most of them understood, one of my friends asked me: "What is a furry exactly?" I sent him a link from the sidebar of this reddit but he refused to look at it. Honestly, I don't know how to explain what a furry is, while I understand the concept, I can't put it into words. Can I please get some help with this?

submitted by TandT89
[link] [2 comments]
Categories: News

Mortality

[adjective][species] - Mon 15 Jul 2013 - 13:00

Death is important to us. When a furry dies, we—as a group—react strongly.

Following the death of a furry, there is often an outpouring of grief. Much of that grief is from furries who have never met the deceased.

Here’s the first comment on Flayrah’s news post about the death of Lemonade Coyote (link), a well-regarded but not especially well-known American furry:

I don’t know the guy, but I’m sorry this happened and I’m sorry for his family.

This comment is typical of the sentiment expressed by many furries in this sort of situation. It’s heartfelt, it’s sweet, and it’s clear that the commenter has been personally affected by the death of a stranger. The only thing that our commenter and Lemonade Coyote have in common is that they are both furries.

It’s unlikely that our commenter would be similarly affected by the death of a non-furry. This is not to say he would be cold-hearted, just that he is less likely to be personally affected by the death of, say, a fellow college student (that he had also never met). As has been discussed in [a][s] in the past by Makyo (Death in the Fandom), there is something about the interconnectedness of our furry community that makes death affect so many of us so greatly.

I think that there are a couple of reasons why death is so important to us as a group.

For starters, furries are young: about 90% of us are younger than 30 (ref). And like any group of young people, furries are more inclined to spend time with peers rather than the wider community.

We live in a world where our social choices, at least outside of high school, are dominated by urbanization and the internet. We are able to socially discriminate more than at any other time in human history: we can choose to hang around with people of similar interests, similar culture, similar socio-economic background, and similar age. Most of us are not required to participate in a community dictated by proximity, such as in a 1600s village, or a tribe.

This shift in the way that humans form social groups began with the Industrial Revolution, just 200 years ago (the blink of an eyelid in evolutionary terms). It is the cause of significant challenges for many people in today’s world. We share our living space with an overwhelming number of people. Because we can only manage a limited number of social connections, we must be choosy. This process of exclusion makes it easy for someone to feel lonely despite being surrounded by people, or to be rejected from a social clique.

I’ve written previously about how society can be alienating (Furry as an Alternative to Religion). I believe that furry provides a rare social environment that is based on inclusion. It’s one of the great things about furry: everyone is welcome by default. Our culture is more in tune with the idea of community as a whole, compared to the wider world.

Our close community means that we may be personally saddened by the death of another furry, even a stranger. We have lost one of our own, and we know that the death will be felt keenly by other furries.

It doesn’t help that furry deaths tend to be sudden. This is due to our demographics: largely young, and largely male.

The leading causes of death among young men in the United States (ref) are (1) Misadventure (or ‘unintentional injuries’, perhaps from a car accident) and (2) Suicide. This is how furries die too.

Death through misadventure and death through suicide are relatable for most of us. We may have done something stupid, or otherwise been in a situation that placed ourselves at risk. And all of us—yes, all of us—have had suicidal thoughts. We can personally relate to these causes of death, and it’s natural for us to fantasize about them.

When we fantasize, when we fixate on death, we are experiencing a mortality crisis. We fantasize about how the moments before death must have felt, we fantasize about last thoughts, we imagine how we might have acted in the same situation. We find death (when it’s relatable but not so close that we’re overcome by grief) to be engaging.

We sometimes feel bad for being engaged by death. We read through last comments on FA, or Twitter, or Livejournal, and try to picture the subsequent events. And then, sometimes, we feel remorseful, as if our reaction were disrespectful. But our reaction—the mortality crisis—is normal, and normally positive.

In the non-furry world, the death of a celebrity can cause a similar outpouring of grief. Despite the celebrity being a stranger, many people feel compelled to express their personal reaction; perhaps in a comparable fashion to our commenter on Lemonade Coyote’s death, or perhaps in a more overt way. Such expressions of grief are sometimes pathologized: people assume that the griever imagines a personal connection with the celebrity. Such behaviour is sometimes compared to stalking.

FindAGrave (www.findagrave.com) is a website where people can leave comments, virtual flowers, and nauseating animated gifs by way of remembrance. As an example, the amazing screencap below is taken from James Gandolfini’s page:

findagrave

In this case, it’s easy to assume that these commenters are delusional (along with many, many, many others on FindAGrave). But I don’t think that all those who feel a strong connection to Gandolfini are confused over whether there was a real relationship. It is simply that Gandolfini was well known, so it’s easy to fantasize about his death.

Gandolfini’s death provoked a minor mortality crisis in some people, just like the death of Lemonade Coyote did for some others. Public memorials like FindAGrave (or the comments sections on Flayrah) provide an avenue to express that feeling. Such comments are mostly about the writer, not the deceased.

It’s rare for us to think about the inevitability of our own death. Our innate ability to avoid thinking about death is probably an evolutionary trait. Life would simply be too stressful if we were to consider our own death when engaging in risky activities, like crossing the road. So on the rare occasions where death comes to mind, it can provoke a strong and unexpected reaction—a mortality crisis.

A friend of mine recently witnessed a pigeon’s death. He heard it crash into a second-story window, and watched as it twitched and died on the pavement below. It took around 15 minutes to die as my friend stood transfixed, unable to pull himself away from the grisly spectacle.

He told me that he felt ashamed by his compulsion to watch the pigeon’s death. He described feeling queasy and stimulated, almost excited. In hindsight, he judged those feelings as ‘wrong’, that he should have been less curious, or more respectful. But there is nothing wrong with his feelings. They are the same ones that provoke an emotional response when we read about the death of a furry, or seek out footage of fatal accidents on the internet, or watch clips of the September 11 attacks.

Oliver Burkeman, a British journalist who writes on mental wellbeing (here), argues that thinking about death is healthy. The prospect of death—that of our own or of a loved one—puts the value of life into relief, and can remind us of those things we find valuable. Burkeman suggests that we should take time to consider the inevitability of death. It’s a kind of small, planned, pre-emptive mortality crisis.

I agree that this is a healthy way of managing the spectre of death, and we can learn to live life in a more enjoyable fashion if we are able to consciously acknowledge mortality.

From a linguistic point of view, I think that the term ‘bucket list’ is aesthetically ugly. It’s a clumsy reappropriation of an anachronistic metaphor, ‘kicking the bucket’. But from a philosophical standpoint, a ‘bucket list’ is a good example of Burkeman’s principle in action. We have a limited time on Earth, and the thought processes involved in compiling a personal wishlist can help us broaden our horizons. As always, we make ourselves happy through personal improvement: physical, mental, spiritual.

Furry offers great opportunities: opportunities for travel, for personal relationships, for new experiences. A furry ‘bucket list’ might include a visit to a large convention, or a trip around the world to meet a close friend. Such goals are rarely easy, but they are often achievable for someone who is motivated. Consideration of death can add purpose to life.

Artist Wants to Increase Interest in His Work

Ask Papabear - Mon 15 Jul 2013 - 12:12
Papabear,

I’ve been in the fandom for a few years now, and now I seem to be running into a bit of a problem.

I’ve been drawing on and off for a few years, used to get a few comments, but now it has really dropped off to 0 - 2 comments per submission even though I am giving it my all. Even with photos I am posting as well comments have dropped off with well nearly everything I posted or wrote in a journal.

It also seems that way at AC since I do fursuit and not many photos, or anything, I am unsure if people are avoiding me or what. But I guess I need some sort of advice.

Hypr

* * *

Hi, Hypr,

Well, I looked on your FA page, and it lacks commission information, so adding that could be helpful to you. There are ways, too, to be proactive about getting the interest up on your art. You can:

1) Create Facebook and Twitter pages and post whenever you have a new artwork available.

2) If you do work for sale, occasionally, offer a free furry badge commission to “the first caller,” so to speak. Or run a “sale” on your work.

3) Join artist discussion groups on Facebook or furry sites like SoFurry, Furry4Life, Furtopia, FurAffinity, FurNation, Yiffstar, etc.

4) Finally, remember that the furry artist talent out there is getting better and better every year. The more I watch artists online and find new artists, the more I have been impressed with their skills. You are in a very competitive world now, and you need to practice your art as much as possible, improving every day.

Some people make the mistake that all they have to do is post their art and people will find them and comment. You really need to be more aggressive than that.  Make your name a real presence in the furry fandom by actively discussing your work and the work of others, and you will find people clicking through to your FA page to find out what your work is like.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Papabear

It Lives! (tail project update)

Furry Reddit - Mon 15 Jul 2013 - 11:53
Categories: News

Accepting My Fursona

Furry Reddit - Mon 15 Jul 2013 - 11:11

Hello :3 It's my first post here and I've had an interesting experience with discovering my furry and I was curious of any of you have gone through this.

Starting in middle school everyone began comparing me to a rabbit. I rebelled against it and for years tried to fight it. A few years ago I joined the furry community and began testing out fursonas. Cats, wolves, dogs, etc. None of them felt right. I ended up losing interest in my "furryness".

Recently I've begun to embrace it again. Once again, I ignored the comparisons. Then, I began to connect to actual rabbits. It began with rescuing and helping a nest of baby rabbits. My boyfriend and I made sure the rabbits were actually in distress and found that someone (we saw footprints and we are pretty sure that some local kids were doing this) was repeatedly uncovering their nest. Nearly each day we simply put the fur and grass back over the nest. We got to know them, always being careful to have as little interaction with them as possible.

They grew up and we were lucky enough to see them leave the nest. I truly believe it was this experience that made me feel connected to rabbits. For the first time ever, I felt connected to rabbits and began to draw my fursona (I'm still working on it and maybe one day I will feel brave enough to share it.).

This fursona feels right. It's been a strange journey, but I'm happy that I've come to this conclusion.

submitted by tentabuldgetherapist
[link] [4 comments]
Categories: News

Looking for some obscure furry related movies.

Furry Reddit - Mon 15 Jul 2013 - 09:15

What might i not have heard about? Is Wolf Children fan subbed yet? I run a movie night every Monday and would like to show something we haven't already seen a hundred times.

submitted by HappyWulf
[link] [6 comments]
Categories: News

Piggyback by Klippy

Furry Reddit - Mon 15 Jul 2013 - 01:33
Categories: News